Mudded
by Stoplight Delight
Summary: Cullen Bohannon hated farming. Considering his crop, this is hardly surprising. In 1860 he was the master of a small and struggling tobacco plantation with one eye perpetually on the door – not only dreaming of a way out, but also watching for the wolf.
1. Summer Morning

_Note: By its very nature this story touches on sensitive issues of race and equality. The views expressed are not mine, but those of the respective characters as interpreted from canonical and historical sources. Only by understanding how pervasive such views were can we understand how humans could come to such a pass, where in a system of slavery is thought of as inevitable, inescapable, and even normal. Only once we understand __**this**_ _can we hope to prevent it from happening yet again._

_I am in no way attempting to sanitize the protagonist of this story. Great effort has been taken to exam his canon portrayal and the psychology of the __backstory given to him by his creators and screenwriters, and this portrayal is an attempt to get behind those inscrutable eyes __and to extrapolate what he might have been like before the trauma of war and devastation changed him. Those who have read my other works will know that is what I do. _If you wish to discuss this interpretation, please do not hesitate to contact me.

**Mudded**

"…_I wish  
myself were mudded in that oozy bed  
where my son lies…"_

– _from_ _The Tempest_

**Chapter One: Summer Morning**

The clatter of the stove-lid in the kitchen below woke Cullen Bohannon with an unpleasant jolt. He had been deep in a dark and indistinct dream, and he was slow to recall why he could not just burrow under the light cotton quilt and curl against Mary's inviting body and slip back into slumber. The room was dark: not even a faint grey glow showed at the edges of the curtain. But downstairs Bethel was awake, and laying on his breakfast. It was time to get up.

Carefully he lifted his corner of the sheet, easing it across his chest and slipping it between his body and that of his slumbering wife. His left foot slid off of the edge of the feather tick and settled softly on the rag-rug. He tightened the muscles of his abdomen and sat, his spine creaking its protest at the motion. There was a sharp stab of pain from his right hip, but he ignored it. Getting a body moving in the morning was not without its discomforts, particularly at this time of the year.

He turned slowly, letting his other leg find the border of the mattress and sink down to join its mate. Then he let his arms flop down between his knees, elbows resting heavily on his thighs. Breathless he listened to the soft exhalations behind him, and when he was satisfied that he had not woken his wife he allowed himself the luxury of a tired sigh.

He hated summertime, he truly did. Up before dawn in the muggy heat not entirely dissipated by the short night. Fourteen hours of sunshine, and enough work to fill three times that. And his work didn't end at nightfall, either, when everyone else went back to their cabins and whatever leisure there was strength to enjoy after a long, hard day. He'd been up until nearly midnight, bent over the dining room table by the light of the best lamp; tallying, figuring, worrying. Finally Bethel had bestirred herself from her bed to shoo him upstairs, threatening to hide the ledgers and the almanac if he didn't obey her. He had gone, meekly. Bethel was the only person he had ever taken naturally to obeying, and in any case he had been so tired that another half-hour would have seen him curled up under the sideboard, fast asleep with his boots still on.

The one consolation that came from running himself ragged was that his worries could not come between him and his pillow, save in the form of deep, vague dreams. He didn't lie awake, tossing and turning as he did in wintertime. He slept the sleep of the dead, for as long as his short night lasted, and he woke each morning with a head that felt like it was suffering through the aftermath of a glorious drinking spree. It came from working long hours in the heat, he knew, but if there was a cure for summer sun he hadn't found it yet.

Stifling his groan he hauled himself to his feet. The mattress rocked a little behind him and Mary stirred. Cullen froze, squinting over his shoulder in the darkness and wondering anxiously whether he had roused her after all. She was a light sleeper and a habitually early riser, but she had been down the last week with something Doc Whitehead delicately called "a womanly complaint" and she needed her rest. When she fell still again he breathed a little easier, and he moved on bare and silent feet around the end of the tall bed. Navigating blindly through the familiar room he found the chair in the corner where she always laid out his clothes for him, and peeled off his nightshirt before groping for his drawers. He bent his back full-on into its ache and stepped into them, then found his undershirt and tugged it over his head. It smelled strongly of sunshine and homemade soap, and he fumbled at the buttons with calloused fingers. Then he gathered up the remaining garments and padded to the door.

He had greased the hinges two nights ago, and they swung smooth and soundlessly. Out in the little corridor he drew the door closed with care, lest it should bang against the post and disturb his sleeping wife. Passing the door of the nursery with the briefest longing glance, Cullen went to the stairs and descended with care, keeping close to the bannister so that the steps would not squeak. From the front entryway a narrow strip of lamplight filtered through the dining room from the kitchen, and by its glow he pulled on stained but clean cotton socks that by the end of the day would be foul and sticky. He sat down on the bench by the front door to pull on his trousers, hauling them slowly up each leg like an old man and hoisting himself only long enough to drag them over his backside. Sluggishly, shoulders stretching tortuously, he got his arms into the sleeves of his coarse cotton workshirt and did up the front. He tucked the tails into his pants and eased first one suspender and then the other up into place. His work-boots were waiting on the floor, and he fought with the stiffened leather, dragging them on at last with twin grunts of grim satisfaction. His head felt light after these exertions and he sat still, stealing a moment's rest before the rigours of the day.

From the kitchen the sounds of breakfast were coming more quickly now, and his nostrils perked at a familiar scent. It roused in him the will to bestir himself, and he shuffled down to the other end of the hallway and through the dining room to the kitchen. Bethel stood at the stove with her back to him, measuring out flour with an old teacup. On the stovetop thick slices of side meat were just beginning to sizzle in their pan, and beside it the hominy was simmering, but it was the copper pot on the back of the stove that held Cullen's eye as he shambled up to lean against the doorpost.

"Coffee?" he grunted, squinting in the lamplight with eyes still crusted in sleep.

"Be ready direc'ly," Bethel said, moving from the worktable to the stove with a practiced grace that belied her years. "Drink it too soon, an' you won't get nothin' but brown water. Sit down an' wait like a gentleman. I'll bring it through when it's done."

Instead of retreating to the dining room as requested, Cullen shoved himself off of the door and flung one lean leg over the bench that ran along the side of the table. He planted his elbow and flicked his thumb along each eyelid to wick away the sharp residue on his lashes. "You had a look outside yet?" he asked. "Think we might get rain?"

"You don' want rain," Bethel said firmly. She managed to keep most of the exasperation from her voice, but her impatience with his perpetual blunders was plain. "It rain today, you'll never get them plants topped, an' Elijah say they need toppin' bad."

"I know that," Cullen grumbled. The plants had to be topped all right, but they had been at it for four days straight and he could have done with a rest. "That's what I meant."

She cast him a knowing look over one bony shoulder, but she only shook her head and turned her attention back on the stove. She flipped the bacon expertly and then moved to take down a small iron skillet from its peg on the wall. From the breadbox she produced two of yesterday's biscuits and brushed them deftly with a little melted butter. She placed them on the skillet and, with her hand wrapped in a dishtowel, opened the door of the oven and slid them inside. From the dish dresser she took a cup and saucer, and deposited them in front of her young master. She hooked the coffee pot from off the stove and poured him a full measure of the rich dark fluid. The tantalizing scent rose up in a head of steam, and Cullen closed his eyes blissfully. He reached for the little bottle of sorghum syrup that stood on the table and tipped some into his cup. That he was taking sorghum in his coffee was a secret between him and Bethel. Mary would have been horrified to know her husband was resorting to this economy in one of his few luxuries, but they were running low on store sugar and there would be no money coming in until the tobacco was picked and cured and sold.

He curled his hand around the cup, fingers flinching back a little from the heat. It was still too hot for drinking, but he took the handle anyhow and slurped a little across his tongue. The fierce warmth of it shrivelled his taste-buds and settled down into his chest, and he could feel himself beginning to wake up properly.

Bethel was back at the stove, stirring the hominy with a critical eye. Then she put another pan on to heat and went back to starting her dough. "Lottie ought to join you out in the fields today," she said. "Nothin' for her to do 'round this here house."

Cullen shook his head. "It's no work for a girl," he said. "She'll catch sick, and then where'll we be? 'Sides, I need her here in case something goes wrong with Mary. How would you take care of her and Gabe and come to fetch me all at once?"

"That chile goin' grow up spoilt if you don' teach her to do what needs doing," Bethel warned. "She ten years old now; old enough to do her share."

"She does her share," said Cullen. "It's harder 'n you think keeping a three-year-old boy entertained, and she helps in the house and she hoes the vegetable patch. She was a good help with the seedlings, and come curing time she'll be so busy hauling wood chips to the fire you'll think she's run off."

Bethel turned, floury fists planted on the hips of her broad work apron. "I know jus' how hard it is keepin' a boy entertained," she said. "An' when you see that boy grow up an' start workin' hisself to the bone while some shif'less li'l girl as ought to be out in the fields is wranglin' him into lettin' her hang 'round the house like this a hundred-hand place an' she Miz Sutcliffe's hair-dressin' maid, then you tell me how hard _that_ be!"

She wiped her hands wrathfully and flipped the slices of side meat onto two plates. One she set aside to cool, and the other she balanced on the stove shelf where it could keep warm. Bethel tipped a dollop of grease out of the used pan into the clean one. Then she set about mixing the rest of the drippings with a helping of coffee and stirring in pinches of pepper and mustard for gravy. Cullen took a long draught from his cup, savouring it despite his scalded tongue. The sorghum left a faint medicinal taste, but the brew was strong and sweet and his veil of fatigue began to lift in earnest. His stomach was grumbling now as the wholesome smells of breakfast grew stronger, and he knew he could find the courage to face another day.

Bethel disappeared briefly into the pantry and emerged with two large brown eggs. With one in each hand she cracked them on the side of the greased frying pan and opened them into it. They sizzled enticingly and Cullen hastily downed another swallow of coffee as his mouth began to water. Another summertime nuisance, his constant voracious appetite. It had never much troubled him in prior years, when the smokehouse was full and the larder was burgeoning and there was money in the bank in Meridian. Then he'd just gone ahead and eaten his fill. This year, however, when he was counting pennies and figuring when each row of the garden might be ripe and keeping a perpetual anxious eye on the tobacco lest a moment's inattention should cause the crop to fail, it was yet another plague to cope with. Last year's crop had been a poor one, and for all the assurances from Nate and Elijah that it had been a bad year and nothing more Cullen fretted. He wasn't much of a farmer, but he could read; tobacco was a demanding crop, and it tired out the soil. If his soil was no good anymore they wouldn't get much of a harvest however hard they worked.

The hominy was ready, and Bethel heaped a generous helping onto the warming plate. She gave the gravy a last energetic stirring and strained it through a cloth into the china gravy boat that Cullen's mother had brought with her from Charleston almost forty years ago. While it settled she opened the oven door and took out the biscuits, now warm and golden. These too she slipped onto the plate, and then flipped the eggs out of the pan deftly, without breaking the yolks or tearing their crispy lacy edges. Finally she turned and looked at the young man.

"You goin' eat out there like you ought to?" she said, jerking her chin at the dining room door. It was more of a command than a question, but Cullen gave her one of his most charming grins.

"No one out there for me to talk to," he said. "I'll get lonesome."

She scowled, but only half-heartedly, and set the plate and the gravy before him. He poured the fluid liberally over the ham and hominy. A moment later she was back with knife and fork.

Cullen looked at his plate, restraining the urge to tear into it like a starving man. "Eggs _and_ side meat?" he said wearily, thinking of their dwindling stores and the long months until November. "Bit extravagant for one meal."

"You eat every mouthful of that, you hear me?" Bethel demanded. "You goin' out in that dew, you need a good breakfast inside you. No sense you getting' youself laid up in bed too, now is there?'

The mouthful of savoury grits soured for a moment in Cullen's mouth as his thoughts shifted to Mary. The doctor hadn't offered much by way of explanation for her illness, and had prescribed nothing but rest and nourishing food. For this opinion he had been paid two dollars, which Cullen couldn't really spare. Doc Whitehead was a good sort, and would have let the fee pass if he'd suspected, but Cullen had been determined he should not suspect. If a man couldn't scrape together a couple of silver Liberties for his wife's medical treatment he wasn't much of a man at all. He was far more worried about Mary than the money, for she had been wan and listless for days and could not even muster much interest in their son.

He tried to put the thought from his mind and broke a biscuit in half. He bit into the warm shell, hard and faintly stale despite Bethel's skillful reheating. He missed having fresh biscuits at breakfast. In the summertime he rose so early that the stove wasn't yet hot enough for baking; in another hour Bethel would serve up a fresh batch for Mary and Gabe, and keep a couple back for him to eat tomorrow. He sopped the quickbread in the gravy and munched, telling himself to enjoy what he had.

The side meat was done just how he liked it, and the treat of being able to have it with an egg cheered him. He took another forkful of hominy and washed it down with his coffee. Bethel was hard at work on her bread dough now, mixing flour and water and salt with her starter.

"You comin' up to the house for dinner today?" she asked.

"Doubt it," said Cullen. His stomach was beginning to feel comfortably full now, and the effort of eating like a civilized person was no longer so onerous. "Waste of time, and I'll be too much of a mess to come in the house."

"A hot dinner wouldn't do you no harm," Bethel grumbled. "Maybe I'll sen' Lottie down with something nice."

"Maybe you _won't_!" Cullen protested. "You know how that looks. I'll take my dinner with me, same as always. You want to give us a treat, send Lottie with a bucket of cold water 'bout two o'clock." He chewed thoughtfully. "Make it two buckets: she can use the wheelbarrow to tote them."

Outside the sky was fading now from grey to the nascent indigo of morning. Hurriedly Cullen scooped up the rest of the hominy and shoveled it into his mouth. He got to his feet, draining his coffee cup as he rose, and snagged the second biscuit from his otherwise empty plate. Bethel was tying the cooled pork into a napkin with two bread-and-butter sandwiches and a peach. She turned and handed it to him, holding him for a moment with a searching and thoughtful gaze.

"It goin' be a hot one today, Mist' Cullen," she said, brushing fondly at a stray crumb on his collar. "You be sure an' take care."

He grinned. "How would I ever get by without you fussing over me?" he teased.

"I don' know," she said frankly. "Bes' hope you never have to find out."

Cullen snorted and took his hat from its hook. He wore a cheap straw when he was out in the tobacco: no sense in ruining a good hat. Planting it on his head, slightly canted over his right eyebrow, he gave Bethel's hand a quick squeeze. "If Mary takes a turn you send that girl out to fetch me, you hear?" he said.

"You think I wouldn't jump like a June bug to get you out of them fields for an hour or two?" Bethel said. More gently she added, "Missus ain't goin' take a turn: don' you worry 'bout her. Be up on her feet in no time."

He offered her a small grateful smile for this reassurance, and then he was out the back door and into the predawn gloom. He could hear the distant sound of voices past the willows, where the Negro cabins stood. The henhouse was still silent, its denizens waiting for daylight to raise their accustomed ruckus. Only Jeb, the aged possum-hound, was abroad at this hour, waiting eagerly to greet his master. Cullen stooped to scratch the dog behind his flopping ears, offering the rapidly cooling biscuit. Jeb devoured it eagerly and then loped off in the direction of the cabins. His arrival would alert Nate and Elijah that the boss was abroad, and they'd hurry to finish their breakfasts and join him.

The first stop on the morning circuit was the stable, where the horses waited to be fed and watered and brushed. Cullen hauled open the left half of the broad double door and slipped inside, stepping over the tongue of the buggy that now only saw regular use on Sundays. In the first year of their marriage, he and Mary had taken great pleasure in afternoon rides, touring the county that he knew as well as his own skin and that she was only just discovering. Those had been better times, however, and he could not often be spared from the land even to transact necessary business in town. The matched Morgans they had brought from New York State to pull it were now the only horses on the place, for Cullen had sold his hunter in the spring to help make up the tax money that hadn't been covered by the proceeds of a poor crop. Pike and Bonnie were beautiful horses, strong and patient and tireless, and they were as good for riding as for driving. They stirred in their stalls at Cullen's familiar scent, and Bonnie nickered impatiently.

"Easy there, girl," Cullen called. "I'm coming." He took the tin feed pail from its hook and began filling it with the heavy wooden scoop tied to the side of the bin. He didn't wonder that the horses were restless: all week he had been without the opportunity to ride them, and they had had to be content with Lottie leading them around the yard before supper. Damn the tobacco and its endless coddling, but if he didn't coddle it he wouldn't be able to feed his people this winter, nor give the government its due, nor keep the land or a roof over his wife and child. Chafe though he might against the eternal futile labour of the farm, he couldn't see any honourable escape from it.

He shook out the feed for the horses and put down the pail so that he could stroke their velvet noses while they ate. Bonnie needled at this distraction, but Pike focused placidly on his breakfast. He was rewarded by a thorough rubbing of his ears and neck. Cullen supposed he ought to go down and take care of the mules, but he hesitated. The two teams that did most of the heavy labour – ploughing, hauling, breaking up soil, pulling out rotted tree stumps – were reliable, but they were ugly and they were stupid. He had never much cared for mules, and in this solitary moment before the slaves came up to the stable he wanted to enjoy his time with his horses.

Someone had filled the trough last night, and so Cullen was spared the dreary trudging to and from the well. He took the curry-comb from its peg and climbed over the gate of Pete's stall to rub him down. It wasn't Cullen's responsibility to muck out the stalls, but if the others didn't turn up by the time he was through with the brushing he thought he just might do it. Anything to keep away from the mules, which in the last couple of years he had come to resent as a symbol of his general discontent. But no sooner had he scrambled over into Bonnie's sanctum than a dark shape appeared silhouetted against the faint gathering light in the doorway and Nate's voice rang out.

"Morning to you, Mist' Cullen," he said. "She goin' to be a hot one."

"So I've heard," Cullen said. He heard the rattling of grain on tin and knew that Nate was dishing out for the mules. He curried more swiftly now.

"Bethel said she were goin' to have a word with you 'bout Lottie workin' in the fields." There was a guarded note to Nate's tone now, as if he intended to take a measure of his master's mettle based upon the response to this statement. Long ago Cullen and Nate had been playmates, charging about the plantation like a matched pair of hellions, one white and one black. Cullen had gone away to university and left a lanky and high-spirited youth behind. He had returned to find a man who, for all their shared childhood, was more a stranger than a friend. To this day he didn't understand what had come between them in those years apart. Sometimes he wanted to talk about it, if not with Nate then with Mary, but he didn't quite dare. He knew what Mary, at least, would say.

"I told her no," he said. "Lottie's too young to be working in wet tobacco, and with Mrs. Bohannon abed I want her near the house. The radishes need thinning: she can do that instead."

There was an inscrutable grunt from the other side of the stable. Lottie was Meg's daughter by her abroad husband, a cotton foreman at the neighbouring Sutcliffe plantation. Nate's interest in the child had initially puzzled Cullen, until he realized that his old friend held something of an unrequited candle for Meg. Of course, fondness or not, it was only basic human consideration to worry about a ten-year-old pulling suckers in a dew-soaked field. It was certainly known to be done. Most of the neighbours were cotton planters, but those who did raise a field or two of tobacco on the side indulged in the unhealthy practice of sending young slaves out to tend the growing plants. Except at transplanting time, when every pair of hands was needed to roust the seedlings from their beds and move them out into the furrows, Cullen kept Lottie well out of it.

Elijah had joined them now, and Cullen led Bonnie out of her stall so it could be raked. He kept an arm on her neck, murmuring to her and drinking in the earthy scent of her mane. He took a wizened carrot from the dwindling sack and fed it to her, wishing he had a lump of sugar to offer instead. He didn't mind doing without himself, but depriving those he cared about – human and animal alike – was hard on a man's pride.

Elijah worked with the efficiency that only an old labourer can. He was a remnant of better days, when the plantation had flourished under Cullen's father and there had been thirty Negros working under the one-time foreman. Now he turned his hand to anything, like everyone else on the place, and he was wise enough or merciful enough to keep from reminiscing about happier times. All that was left of those old days was Elijah and Bethel and the land itself; though where once seven hundred of the thousand acres had been cultivated there were now less than a hundred, and those hundred growing less fruitful with every passing year. Though he rotated his tobacco from field to field each year, planting wheat or feed corn in its former spot, Cullen suspected the ground was about used up. He had thought of trying to break up some of the pasture land, but that was a huge task for three men to tackle in addition to all the other labours of the year. He didn't know if he even had the right to call his land a plantation anymore, but hell if he was going to settle for raising his son as nothing but a poor farmer.

The old man backed out of the stall and Cullen took up a pitchfork to spread fresh straw while Elijah trucked the muck barrow out to the mulch heap. When the tobacco was in they'd load the wagon with the foul-smelling stuff and spend day after stinking day churning it into the worn-out soil. Cullen cleaned Bonnie's hooves and led her back into the clean stall, then took Pete out just in time for Elijah's return. When the horses were settled and Elijah went to repeat the process with Nate and the mules, Cullen laved his hands in the wash-bucket and left the stable.

Dawn was breaking, rose and carmine on the horizon. By its light he could make out the shapes in the dooryard: Lottie's skinny calico-clad shadow scattering corn for the chickens, and her strong-backed mother coming up the hill from the cowshed with the milk pails. Cullen raised a hand in greeting to Lottie and hurried to open the back door for Meg.

"Thank you, Mist' Cullen," she said politely as she turned sideways to pass through. Almost instantly she was engulfed in Bethel's scolding, and Cullen eased the door closed and moved stealthily out of range.

He came upon Lottie just as she was finishing with the chickens, and she dropped him a curtsy that made her many pigtails bob. "Mornin' Massa," she said. "Ma say maybe you put me in the fields today?"

"No," Cullen said firmly. He wondered just how enthusiastically Bethel had put forward this notion, and was relieved he had only five slaves if it meant he didn't have to have this conversation more than two more times. "I want you to help Bethel look after Mister Gabe, and I want you to see about thinning them radishes. If the peas need tying up again, you find some good stakes in the woodshed and take care of it. And look in on Mrs. Bohannon from time to time; see if she needs anything."

"Yassir," the girl said. "Missus Bohannon… she ain't goin' die, is she? Ma says sometimes ladies with troubles, they die."

Swallowing the flutter of terror that rose in his throat at this possibility, Cullen shook his head. "No, she's going to be just fine," he said.

"Then maybe she goin' have a baby?" said Lottie hopefully. "I'd be a good nurse for a baby, Mist' Bohannon; honest I would."

"I know you would, but she's not having a baby neither," said Cullen. "She's just a little poorly. A few more days' rest, that's all she needs: but you take care of her now, Lottie. I'm relying on you."

The girl's chest puffed out a little. "Yassir, you can rely on me!" she proclaimed. "Ain't I looked after Mist' Gabe like he my own li'l brother? I wisht Mrs. Bohannon _would_ have 'nother baby. Ma cain't."

Cullen frowned at this revelation. "What do you mean, Ma cain't?" he asked.

Lottie shook her head wisely. "On account that no-good new overseer at Hartwood don' like Pa havin' comp'ny. Ma says unless'n that white trash die or move off down south for the wages, she ain't never goin' have 'nother baby."

"Oh." While a trifle startled at the apparently frank discussion Lottie had had with her mother on the subject, Cullen was tremendously relieved to know the problem was a logistical one. For a moment he had been fearing for Meg's health, and one more such worry was likely to prove more than he could stand. "Well, you run and help Bethel with breakfast, then, and you mind her. Though pr'haps," he added with a conspiratorial wink; "you might tell her I said if there's a spare biscuit going she should give it to you."

With many a "yassir" and a "thankee sir", Lottie ran off towards the house, narrowly missing a collision as Meg came out with the slop bucket for the hogs. For a moment Cullen stood where he was, half expecting the woman to come to him with her own roundabout approach to the question of Lottie working in the fields. When she did not he decided that Bethel must have shared his decision, and headed off to the well.


	2. Top and Sucker

**Chapter Two: Top and Sucker**

A short time later the tobacco crew headed out to the fields. Each had an empty cotton bag, rigid and stained with resin, slung over one shoulder, and each carried two wooden buckets brimming with water. Cullen was toting the pair with the dippers, and the handles kept swinging around and slapping against his knuckles. In the toolshed he had swapped his wool pants for a pair of stiff oilskin overalls, and whenever one knee passed too close to the other the cloth would stick. Nate and Elijah were similarly attired, and Meg had a heavy oilskin apron wrapped around her oldest dress. The sun was two-thirds over the horizon now, blazing splendidly behind them, but there was no time to admire it. They passed the fields of feed-corn, tall green shoots in the furrows that had been such a chore to keep straight, and came to the edge of the tobacco rows.

The buckets were deposited at the root of a spreading oak that would shade them from the worst of the heat, and they stowed their dinner bundles in a hollow under a large stone. Then the three dark faces turned to their master for instructions; an act of formality rather than necessity, for all three knew their business much better than he did. Trying to keep his dread from showing on his face, Cullen waved a careless hand. "Pick a row and let's get to it!" he said. Then he set his resolve and marched over to the third row in. The earth was soaked with the morning dew, and his boots sank into a good inch and a half of mud. He wished for something, anything, to delay the inevitable, but he had gauged his morning start too well and the light was just bright enough that he could see to work. With a distasteful twitch of his lips he bent to the first plant and set to it.

He heard rather than saw the others following his example. Nate took up on his right, and Elijah on his left. By unspoken agreement the men let Meg have the outside row, where she'd have a better chance of keeping the back of her skirt dry until the sun was higher. The broad leaves, not yet near ready for picking, were wrinkled with veins and fine ridges that held the dew like little troughs. As Cullen snapped the tip off the fine new top sprouting from his plant, a shower of water rained down on the ground, on his boots, on his oilskins. He worked his way down the stalk looking for suckers, the little buds that sprouted at the base of the leaves and would stunt their growth if left alone. He picked them off until he had a handful, and then stowed them in the cotton bag. Not even halfway down the plant his sleeves were soaked with dew, and his fingers were sticky with the dark sap. He reached the bottom leaves, spattered with mud, and then checked the hill for weeds. Then he straightened his back for a brief moment as he moved on to the next hill.

It was wretched work; mind-numbing and backbreaking. Cullen had known he was in for a hard day when he had struggled even to bend to put on his drawers that morning, and by the fifth plant his spine was a twisting column of red-hot agony sending out rippling cramps into the broad muscles of his ribs and flank. He had been out here every day for four days, working the two bottom fields in turn and hoping for a break in the heat. Now the time had come to tackle the top field, and it didn't look like the day would be any cooler than the ones that had gone before. As he drew on to the middle of his row Cullen could feel the sun on his back, raising a sweat behind his ears already. The oilskin overalls were shining with dew and the mud sucked at his boots with every step. The long sinews of his legs burned as yesterday's soreness was stretched out and today's began to take hold. He worked as quickly as he could, miserably conscious of the countless rows rolling away to his right.

On the other side of the wall of green, Nate was already a plant ahead. He was the fastest tobacco-topper in the county, and Cullen suspected in all of Mississippi. He had been out in these fields since he was only a little older than Lottie, and he knew his trade well. He had a skill and a knack for concentration that Cullen would never possess, and his sure dark fingers never fumbled. Surely he had to be in just as much pain as his master, but with the same dour determination that Cullen possessed he refused to show it.

Elijah was slower, but no less skilled. He never missed a sucker and he never dropped his handful. If he felt any indignity in grubbing fields he had once commanded he gave no sign. Patient and methodical, he stooped and straightened with the same steady rhythm as the younger men.

Cullen couldn't see much of Meg, especially as the sun climbed higher and his perspiration began to sting in his eyes, but he knew she was working with care and efficiency. They were good laborers, his people, and they never complained. And as much as he loathed the work and felt his spirit slowly breaking under the monotony and the constant strain, he neither voiced his discontentment nor made any attempt to drive them to do what he would not do himself. In his father's time it would have been unthinkable for the son of the house to be out here toiling with his slaves, but Cullen was master now and he knew that if the struggling plantation was to survive another season he had to put in as much as they did and more. For three years now he had worked the same long days at the same wearisome tasks as Nate and Elijah, and although he was at best only average and at worst hopelessly inept he kept at it. Whether he liked it or not this was his life, and if there was no way out he simply had to endure it.

He reached the end of the long row at last, wiping his brow with a sleeve too sodden to be of any use. His cuffs were smeared with the tarry sap, and his hands were black with it. He shuffled down two rows and started again, working back this time with the sun in his eyes. The perpetual stooping was a torment, and a band of pain began to close around his ribs. His shoulders were burning and his elbows ached. Already his head was pounding and the sweat trickling on his upper lip was a constant irritant. The bag slung over his back was starting to have a heft to it as it filled with the prunings, and the mud, the hateful mud that still smelled faintly of dung and ash, dragged at his feet and mired him here, a prisoner of the land that had been his birthright.

Yet as dreary and painful as the work was, what Cullen hated most was the utter futility of it. He might spend days or weeks toiling here; might expend the last of his strength tending the plants and hoeing the weeds that if left unchecked would shred the tobacco leaves and render them unfit for sale. But all it would take was one withering dry spell, one untimely storm, one freakish wind to lay it all to waste. Whatever he did and however hard he tried, he could not control the weather, and it was the weather by which a farmer lived or died. And if by a stroke of luck the crop was good, and the weather held, and a stray spark didn't send up the drying shed in an inferno of destruction, at the end of the year he'd have nothing to show for it all. He'd be back where he started: winter stores in the barn, seed laid by for spring, fields empty again. There was never any tangible proof of a farmer's work, except that he had managed to survive another year: nothing to look at, nothing to touch. Nothing to leave behind as evidence that a life had been lived to some purpose.

Even so, he thought, he might have endured it all or even thrived if he believed he was any good at the work. If he thought he was the best man for the job then maybe, just maybe, it would all be worth the struggle. But he wasn't; not by half. His darkies were all better farmers than he; even Meg was a cleaner picker. Behind a plow he was stumbling and clumsy. When he sowed, his seed spread unevenly. He couldn't even hill a potato any better than ten-year-old Lottie, and his speculations about weather and planting cycles were almost always so wildly inaccurate that Bethel was hard-pressed to restrain her rolling eyes. His father had been a born planter, despite the wealth that kept him at one remove from actually grubbing in the dirt, but Cullen Bohannon was not.

The damp had soaked through his overalls now, and his undergarments began to grow heavy with it. It didn't help matters that he was now perspiring profusely and his back was soaked with hot and sticky sweat that seemed to do nothing to cool him. The sun was well overhead when he reached the end of the row and stumbled over to a fresh one. Only after culling three more plants did he realize that he was wretchedly thirsty. His eyes shifted towards the tree and the laden pails beneath it. The water within them would still be cool from the well; clean and delicious. But it was an ironclad rule of the field that a picker could only go for water at the end of an east-worked row, and if he expected the others to abide by that he had to set an example.

So he worked on, weary and parched and so terribly bored. He wished that tobacco-topping took more of his brain, because when he had nothing else to think about his worries came swarming back to plague him. They were more persistent and more obnoxious than the clouds of tiny black insects that swarmed around the sweaty labourers, and they were far more likely to drown him. He worried about Mary, lying in bed as the house grew warmer. He worried about Bethel, getting on in years and growing too old to be managing the house without proper help. He worried about Elijah, whose cataracts were thick enough now that they were visible at two yards and who really ought to be able to go into a restful retirement, if only there were someone else to take over his work. He worried about the account at the dry goods store in Meridian, growing despite his constant frugality. He worried about Gabe, who would be big enough for a proper pair of shoes in the winter and where was _that _money going to come from? And Gabe, growing up the son of a struggling farmer – or a starving planter, if he could still call himself that on the strength of his thousand acres alone – and what would they do about schooling and a pony and all the things a young boy ought to have? And if Mary did have another child sometime…

He tripped on an unexpected slope and landed on his hands and knees in wild indiangrass. He had reached the end of his row without realizing it.

"All right there, Mist' Cullen?" Nate asked, offering a hand to hoist him to his feet. Apparently the gap between them had closed in the fever-pitch of work driven by anxiety, for they were both changing over at the same time. Cullen struggled to drag his pant-legs out of the mud and followed the broad-shouldered man. Nate jerked his chin, indicating that Cullen should take the nearest row, but Cullen shook his head. Meg was coming to the end of hers, and there was one worry at least that he could address at once. He took the next row on instead and took his time with the first two plants until she came to the furrow beyond him.

Nate was ahead again and Elijah was two rows away. This afforded Cullen some measure of privacy for what was sure to be a delicate conversation. "Meg," he said quietly, keeping his eyes on his work and his hands moving as if he were a darkie in his grandpappy's day, when overseers had ridden the fields with whips. "I wanted a word."

"Me too, Mist' Cullen," Meg murmured. She turned from her plant and smiled shyly. "I want t'thank you. Bethel says you tol' her Lottie too young to be out in this here field. Lotta planters wouldn' think that, 'specially did they get out here like you do. You got to work harder your own self if she ain't here, so I thank you."

Uncomfortable at her words, Cullen focused all the harder on his picking. His fingers were slick with tar now and he had to use his nails to get a good grip on the smaller suckers. "We've all gotta work harder, Meg, but ain't none of us want her out here taking sick. She does good work up at the house, and it's a help to Bethel to have her, especially with Mrs. Bohannon in bed."

"Yassir, jus' as you say," agreed Meg. She frowned. "But what's you got to talk to me 'bout?"

He peered through the top leaves of the plant he was suckering. His back was curved like a fiddlehead and he could feel it right into his kidneys. He wished he could just get down on his knees and crawl instead, but that would tear up the ground and ruin the hills and the plants would die with their roots exposed to the heat. Awkwardly he cleared his throat.

"I understand you and Peter been having… er… trouble finding time to spend together," he said.

"Oh, it always hard this time of year," Meg said dismissively. "Too much work, not 'nough hands nor hours in a day. But I see him ev'ry Sunday, an' rainy days too. We get by."

"That's not what I meant," said Cullen. He could feel his ears burning in a way that had nothing to do with the heat, and the dryness in his throat was not merely his increasingly fearsome thirst. "You're having trouble spending time _alone _together."

"Oh!" It was hard to tell under the shadow of her hat, but he could have sworn her colour deepened also. "Oh, that's nothin'…"

Now he had started he might as well say his piece. "You know if Sutcliffe's overseer don't like you over there you're always welcome to have Peter over here to call," he said.

"Yassir," she said, bobbing her head. "On'y with Lottie 'round the cabin an' she not brought up with two in the home I…" She ducked her head as she bent for her plant.

"Of course." Cullen used the cover of a tobacco leaf to hide a grimace. He should never have brought the subject up. Such things weren't spoken of in the ordinary way of things, and certainly not between a man and his female slave. "But if you want him here, just put a word in my ear an' I'll have Lottie spend a night up at the house. She can sleep in Gabe's room. You know the treat it'd be for him."

"I thank you, Massa, I surely do," said Lottie. "It hard, two of us on diff'rt places. Never really did fin' a way to make her work."

Cullen finished stripping the plant in silence and then moved to the next one. "Peter's got value, Meg. Good foreman's gotta be worth at least a thousand dollars."

"Twelve hunnerd, he heard Mist' Sutcliffe say," Meg said proudly. "Mebbe more."

"You know I haven't got that kind of money, Meg. I could work day and night for five years and I wouldn't raise that kind of money." His voice was very low now, and he hoped that the bitter loathing of his helplessness did not show in his words. The best crop he had raised since his father's death had only brought in a little more than a thousand. This last winter, after paying off his accounts with local merchants and buying seed and supplies he had only brought home two hundred and sixty-eight dollars, and that was almost all gone. In the old days before the years of his inept management and the bad crops there had always been money to spare.

"I know that, Mist' Cullen." Meg's voice was serene, without regret or resentment.

"I'd buy him if I could," Cullen muttered to himself as he ducked under to check the bottom stalks. Another pair of hands about the place would make a world of difference in their chances of getting along for another year. It would be a fine thing, he told himself, to be able to secure a good strong man; it would be plain sound business to buy up Meg's Peter if only he could afford it. He quelled any thoughts of another, more unsettling motive.

"I know that too, Mist' Cullen," said Meg, and he realized he had been heard. There was another silence and she added anxiously; "I hope you don' take it to mean I wants to be sold, sir. Mist' Cullen? You… you wouldn' sell me 'n Lottie over Hartwood way, would you?"

He knew her fear without having to ask. Hartwood had more mulatto babies than any plantation around Meridian, and most of them belonged to girls only just out of pigtails.

"I wouldn't," he said fiercely. "Not even if you asked me to." He turned back to his work with a vengeance, trying to get the stink of the thought out of his mouth. He had no fondness and precious little respect for his westerly neighbor. Abel Sutcliffe was a brute and a bully. His plantation was only half again the size of the Bohannon holding, but he worked every inch of it with an army of a hundred slaves and half a dozen tyrannical overseers. Cullen felt very strongly that if a man couldn't manage his own people without the aid of a Cracker with a whip, he didn't deserve them. Even in his father's day there had been little whipping on this land, for a whole man worked better than a wounded man and if a darkie didn't respect his master no flogging would change that.

He laboured in sullen silence until he finally reached the end of his row and was at last – at _last_ – able to stagger into the deep shade of the tree for a desperately needed drink of water. He drained the dipper so quickly that his stomach roiled, filled it again and sipped more cautiously the second time. Then he knelt down by another of the buckets, this one marked for washing with a red rag tied about the rope handle, and splashed cool water on his face and neck. He batted off his straw hat and drizzled two handfuls of water into his hair, then got another dipperful from the drinking pail, replaced his hat, and headed back to work.

So the morning passed as the sun grew higher and the day grew hotter. Slowly they crept down the breadth of the field: four sodden and sweltering figures tossed in a sea of brilliant green. As he worked Cullen found himself plagued with doubts about his decisions this year. One bad crop didn't necessarily mean that the land was exhausted, but the fear of that dogged him. He had decided to take a chance and to put in tobacco anyhow – partly because it seemed simplest, and partly because it was all he really knew how to do. He had only just got his head around tobacco: he knew nothing about growing sugarcane or cotton, and neither did Nate or Elijah. His grandpappy had built the place on cotton, and it had been his father who branched into tobacco instead for its higher profit per acre and its more reliable market value. He had made a success of it for years, until things had fallen off in the early 'fifties. Even so he had been managing well until a blight had taken a whole year's work and a mortgage on human property had been called in. Cullen remembered the sickening feeling as the bankers had come to haul away most of the field hands to be sold to cover the debt. It hadn't been his crop then; they had been his father's slaves. But he lived in dread of the day when he might find himself in a similar position. Selling his hunting horse had been a wrench, but at least he knew that wherever Valiant was he was being well treated for the valuable animal he was. The same guarantee could certainly not be made for tobacco men bought by cotton planters or sold away by slave merchants to Florida or southern Georgia.

He certainly wasn't an abolitionist, but on this matter Cullen took a practical rather than philosophical view. Free the slaves, and the entire economy of the South, maybe the whole country, would collapse. He couldn't even free his own slaves, whatever Mary's quiet urgings to the contrary. If he freed them, what would they do? He supposed that was none of his business – a free man was a free man, and stuck with responsibility for his own wellbeing – but nonetheless he worried. He had never met a free Mississippi black, and those he had encountered in New Orleans or Selma seemed to be living uncertain and piecemeal existences. He cared about his people, and he knew he'd be anxious for their welfare if they left him. And what could they do but leave, if they were free? He couldn't afford to give them wages: it was all he could do now to keep everyone fed. And if he _did_ free them and they _did_ leave him, what would he and Mary do? How would they live? Three men and a woman were already doing the farm work of six men, and that with Mary and Bethel and Lottie to take care of the house and the garden. Alone he could have managed; gone off somewhere, found work, maybe started a business venture on the proceeds from the land sale. He'd studied drafting and engineering at university, along with mathematics and the useless human sciences like literature and music and Greek philosophy. But there was Mary to think of, and his son. And if Mary didn't recover her strength, or if she fell ill again… no, no it was impossible to think of freeing his slaves. If he, a struggling small planter who tilled his own fields and dug his own yams, couldn't manage it, how could someone like Sutcliffe, who had twenty times the slaves and no concept of what it meant to button his own shirt?

As he reached the end of another row he felt a sticky and wizened hand pluck at his soaked sleeve. Elijah nodded skyward. "Noontime, Mist' Cullen. Bes' we sit an' rest a while."

Cullen nodded and squinted across the field. Meg was almost finished her row, but Nate had only started a fresh one. "Mark your place and come and eat!" he shouted. His mouth was flooded with spittle and his voice cracked. He spit surreptitiously onto the ground, cupped his filthy hand to his mouth and hollered, "_Noontime!"_

Nate raised an arm to show that he had heard and bent to finish the plant he was working. Meg picked up her pace and was soon climbing out of the mud. Her calico skirts were black to the knees with dirt and tobacco juice, and as she stepped onto the grass she seized the hem and wrung out a thick stream of dirty water. Cullen's own clothes were soaked through and he was sweltering in the heat. He felt ill and lightheaded, and the short walk back to the oak tree seemed to take him an age. Finally he reached the small oasis of shade, shrunken to the limits of the spreading boughs, and flung himself down in the grass.

He knew he ought to say something bracing and cheerful to bolster the others even if he couldn't cover his own exhaustion, but somehow he had no strength for that today. He rolled onto his back and stared up vacantly into the tree, feeling every muscle in his body twitch and spasm. His knuckles ached and his throat was raw, and the world seemed to be spinning very slowly beneath him. He screwed his eyes closed and tried not to think about the awful crawling feeling of tobacco sap trickling down the inside of his leg. How it managed to find its way through oilskin he would never know, but it inevitably did.

Someone brought him a dipper and he managed to raise his head and his hand to drink, but the water was tepid and brought little satisfaction. Nate said something as he tossed the napkin-wrapped dinner bundle into the grass beside him, but Cullen didn't care. As if from a great distance he could hear the three Negros sharing out their own meal and talking quietly while they chewed. Yesterday by this time he had been ravenous; that was always the case when he was out in the fields. Today, however, he wanted nothing more than to lie here with his spine stretched out at last, and to wait for the ground to stop whirling under him.

A fly landed on the tip of his nose and he funneled his lower lip to blow it away. It circled briefly before settling at the corner of his eye. Tiredly he swatted with a hand that felt weighted with shot, and then let his arm fall to earth with a _splat_ of wet cotton. He took two deep, steadying breaths that filled his lungs with hot oppressive air, and finally worked up the will to roll back onto his side. He sat up carefully, wary of his persistent dizziness, and pushed off with one foot so that he slid towards the tree. He propped himself against the trunk and let his head tilt back. The fly had found him again and it hovered just beyond the bridge of his nose, drawn by his sweat and the green smell of the sap.

"More water?" It was Elijah, squatting beside him with a dripping dipper in hand. Through half-lidded eyes Cullen looked sidelong at the impassive, weathered face. He shook his head tersely.

"Hand me that," he said, flicking a vague finger at his parcel of food. He took it and fumbled with the knots, his fingers catching and sticking as he did so. Both Bethel and Mary would have been appalled to know he intended to eat with such dirty hands, but he couldn't be troubled to wash. He'd never get the tar off anyhow, so what was the point? He found the piece of side meat and tore off a chunk with his teeth. It was a satisfyingly savage gesture, and decidedly ungentlemanly. He didn't care. Elijah wouldn't tell anybody.

The salty taste of the pork sent his mouth flooding with saliva again, and he felt himself reviving a little. He'd been pushing too hard in the heat; that was all. He needed to stop thinking so damned much and keep an eye on what he was doing. He chewed doggedly and swallowed with some trepidation, wondering whether he would be able to keep it down. He did, and he took another bite. Elijah was still waiting patiently with the water in one hand while he gnawed a piece of corn pone from the other. After a third mouthful of meat, Cullen took the dipper.

"Thanks," he huffed, and drank. It tasted faintly of wet wood and resin, and he realized that the latter was just the thin film of tobacco juice on his lips. He moved to scrub at his mouth with the back of his hand and then remembered just in time that it was at least four times as filthy. His teeth showed briefly in a wry grin, and he handed back the long-handled vessel.

"Too many plants," Elijah said, squinting out towards the spreading field. "Time we get done we'll on'y have t'start all over."

Cullen felt a hot flash of irritation. "You might've said something earlier," he snapped.

Elijah shrugged. "Did say somethin'. You tol' me you'd figgered how much we'd need, an' I should mind my business."

"So I did," Cullen said, grimacing again. "Then it's keep on like this 'til picking time without a break, or let a few rows go?"

"I known you to do a lot of peculiar things, Massa," said Elijah somberly; "but I ain't never seen you let _nothin'_ go."

He got to his feet with a stolid grunt and shuffled over to rejoin Nate and Meg on the other side of the tree. Cullen watched from the edge of his vision until his foreman was out of sight, and then rolled his eyes. That was the problem, all right. He couldn't let it go. He'd put his mind to doing this job, and he meant to stick to it. He might be a fool and a bumbler and at heart something of a wastrel, but he had made his choice and would follow it to the end. His responsibility to his family and his folks was clear: work this crop and bring it in, and hope he'd manage to raise enough to keep them for another year.

He tore into one of the bread-and-butter sandwiches with vigor, looking past the corn to the faint wisp of smoke beyond the trees which marked where the house stood. He wondered again how Mary was faring, but he knew at the least reasonable excuse Bethel would have sent Lottie out to fetch him. Everything must be well in hand.

He bolted down the last of the sandwich and looked at the second one. His gorge was sitting high and he didn't think he could manage it, so he wrapped it and the peach again and stowed them between two roots. Then he shuffled across the grass to retrieve his hat and tried to shake the sweaty hair off of his brow before settling it in place. Warily but as smoothly as he could manage he hefted himself onto his tired feet and made the ineffectual gesture of dusting his hands on equally grimy overalls. He said nothing to the others, who were passing a dipper of water around, but set out for the next untouched row.


	3. A Fair Price

**Chapter Three: A Fair Price**

Gabe was sitting on the rag rug, playing quietly with his brightly-painted wooden horses. From where she sat in the middle of the broad bed, propped up with pillows and the worn velvet bolster from the récamier downstairs, Mary Bohannon could only see the crown of her little boy's head. His downy brown curls were still damp from the wetting Bethel had given them at noon, and in them she saw a softer portrait of her husband's dark hair. For a moment the wondering love that visited her at strange times seemed to constrict her chest like the whalebone stays she had not worn in days. A faint smile came to her lips.

The bedroom was filled with the heat of the day, which crept through roof and walls like a stealthy invader despite Bethel's efforts to beat it off. Now that the sun had finally worked its way 'round to the other side of the house, the window was open – but no breath of moving air came through it to stir the muslin curtains or interrupt the drowsy stillness of the room. Clad in a fresh linen nightgown with only the sheet drawn up to cover her lap, Mary was not as uncomfortable as she might have expected. She had a broad palmetto fan in one hand, and now and then her wrist gave a lazy twitch that raised a brief breeze to cool her face. Had it not been for the lingering cramping in her body and the ache in her heart, she might have been quite content.

Doctor Whitehead had been very kind, reminding her that she might have mistaken the signs. After all, he had said, women were bound to miss a course now and then in the ordinary way of things, and sometimes when it _did_ come on there was pain and a great quantity of blood. Why, he'd known a woman down west of Meridian who had to spend three days abed every month, her misery came on so badly! Mary had listened and she had nodded and politely agreed, but she had known that he was only being kind. She'd had her share of lunar discomforts, but only once before had she ever felt these deep, rippling, ripping pains. Her eyes moved to her son again, and the fan flapped fervently. Sorrow for her secret loss and fierce love tempered with fear seized her now. If one child had slipped away, so might another – and though a sturdy three-year-old was a very different prospect from a fragile life just taking hold within her she could not help but worry. Many children didn't live to be five years old, carried off in their innocence by sickness or mischance. And here, in this land of strange Southern illnesses, it seemed there was always some new affliction doing the rounds of the county.

She put the thought from her mind like generations of mothers before her. Her son was healthy and happy and well-fed. He had every chance of surviving the risks of childhood to grow up to be a fine man like his father. Her gaze shifted to the window. She was listening for the sound of Lottie coming back from the tobacco fields. Cullen was out there, of course – where else would he be at this time of year? – and she wanted to know how the work was getting on.

When she had first considered uprooting her settled metropolitan life and relocating to this quiet corner of the sleepy South, she had imagined a very different sort of future. She remembered the shy, apologetic smile that had touched her suitor's face as he had described his home.

"I got a thousand acres," he had said, twisting the brim of his hat in his hands. "Pretty land; good land, owned free and clear. My grandpappy carved it out. Tobacco's our cash crop. I might not be quite the hand my father was, but I'm aiming to learn an' the slaves know their business. I only got five, but they's good people, and we're comfortable enough."

The notion of the slaves had made her terribly uncomfortable. Like every one of her friends she had read Mrs. Stowe's heartrending tale of humanity and Christian kindness in the face of terrible brutality, and she had imagined that was the truth of the entire South: whips and bloodhounds and broken families. Yes, Cullen had explained; those things happened sometimes, particularly when a man didn't know how to take on his responsibilities and look after his people. But he had solemnly assured her that the sole hound on his place spent his days sleeping in the sun and worrying rabbits, and that he'd only ever had occasion to strike a slave once. Startled by the idea of this smiling and soft-spoken young man raising a hand to anyone, she had burst out with a breathless "What happened?" before she had realized it was not quite polite.

"Well," he had said, sitting back in the chintz armchair and stretching his long legs out over her mother's parlor rug; "there was a difference of opinion considerin' the ownership of a nest of sparrow eggs. He reckoned they were his 'cause they were down by the cabins: I reckoned they were mine, 'cause I found 'em first. Disagreement got heated. He kicked me in the shin and I punched him square in the nose." He had grinned enormously at her flummoxed expression. "We were both eight at the time," he had added.

He had told her of the strict and capable black woman who had raised him almost from babyhood, and had described each of the others so completely and so comically that she had come to feel that she knew them. But still she had imagined her betrothed leading a lazy life, directing the labour of others and never bestirring himself to do more than pass on orders. As the daughter of a railroad baron who if he didn't haul ties or hammer spikes undoubtedly worked every bit as long and hard in his offices as any Mick on the cut, she had not been sure she could marry an idle man. At this sentiment, couched in the coy give-and-take of modern courtship, Cullen had thrown back his head and laughed.

"Oh, I put in my time," he'd said. "Five darkies on a thousand acres ain't much, and there's more'n enough work for everybody. I've been known to plow a row or two, though you should see 'em chuckling behind their hands when I do!"

And in the first year it really had been only a row or two he plowed. He was busy at sowing time, when the tobacco seed was laid in and sheltered from the elements, and he'd driven the cart to take the seedlings down to the fields for transplant. But it had still been the slaves who did the lion's share of the work. Mary had been privately relieved the first time she had ridden the property with Cullen. He didn't go galloping to and fro, brandishing a cat-'o-ninetails and howling hatefully at his labourers. He was just like any landed farmer up north, giving firm but sensible orders, asking after the work, hopping down from his hunter to lend a hand where it was needed. He'd taken care of the horses himself, and handled small carpentry jobs about the place, and hauled water from the well for Bethel in the middle of the day, and sometimes even milked the three cows. In those early months he had certainly had his leisure, which he largely lavished upon her, but she could see that he was not waxing fat on the suffering of others.

After the first poor crop, the balance of his work had shifted. Mary still remembered how Cullen had come home from Meridian after that rail journey from Louisiana, slumped tiredly in the back of the buggy with Nate on the box. She had come down to greet him eagerly, her baby in her arms, and when he had seen them on the front steps his face had tightened in horrified astonishment, as if he had forgotten their very existence or had only just realized its implications. Only for a moment did that expression linger, but it had collapsed into such a look of bewildered apology that she had almost wished she hadn't come out. For a few days after that he had haunted the house, a quiet and uncertain specter taking up far less space in the world than his lean body warranted. On those frosty nights he had sat up for hours at the dining room table, reckoning up long columns of figures and making endless neat notations that meant nothing to her. As the silence and the brooding stretched on she had started to fear that he had taken leave of his senses.

Then one morning he had bounded out of bed with the rooster's call, thrown on his oldest clothes, and gone charging out to the drying barn to mix mud and clay for chinking the walls. He had hurled headlong into the work of a farmhand – often ineptly, but always with an almost manic determination. No longer content merely to supervise, Cullen threw himself in with his slaves; shoveling manure, tilling fields, staggering gawkily behind a plow, stooping to put in the tobacco seedlings. And that year the concentrated labor of one more man had made all the difference: they had cleared a crop that had paid off their debts and bought their stores and left them five hundred dollars ahead. But the following year the leaves had been mediocre and the price low, and this last harvest had been the poorest of all. The worse the crop, the harder Cullen worked, and Mary was beginning to fear for his health if he kept up this pace.

From the yard came the squeak of the wheelbarrow and a clatter of wood. Mary heard the back door open and then shut with a _bang. _She opened her mouth to call out, and then thought better of it. If she called then Bethel would come, and she didn't want Bethel to know she was anxious for news from the fields. Even after years of living under the same roof, Mary was still rather in awe of the old woman. She had the gentlest and most capable of hands, and a gruff scolding manner that was nonetheless tempered with a genuine fondness for the family, but she had been so long the lone matriarch of the plantation and Mary, the lately-come usurper, was still occasionally nervous in her presence.

"Gabe, dear," she said softly. The child looked up, smiling. "I think that's Lottie come in from the fields. Why don't you call her?"

"Yes," Gabe lisped, flinging aside his horses and climbing onto his plump little legs. He trundled to the door and peered around the post into the hallway. "'Ottie?" he shouted, dancing excitedly from one foot to another. "'Ottie, you dere?"

From below Mary heard low voices conferring; Bethel doubtless extracting her own account from the girl before letting her go. Then there was the sound of swift bare feet on the stairs and the child came into the room. Gabe laughed and flung his arms around her knees, and she ruffled his hair with one hand while she steadied herself against the doorjamb with the other. There was a faint sheen of perspiration on her forehead, and a large wet spot down the front of her skirt where she had spilled some water.

"How you be feelin', Missus?" she asked shyly. She always seemed a little uncomfortable around Mary, though she seemed to have no trouble at all in talking to Cullen. He had a frank and open way of dealing with children that they seemed to take to; certainly Mary's nieces and nephews had had no compunctions about befriending him.

"Much better today, Lottie, thank you," said Mary. "You've been down to take water to the tobacco field?"

Lottie bobbed her head, skillfully guiding Gabe around to the side of her leg so that she could shuffle a little further into the room. "Yass'm," she said. "Two buckets cold water, right out the well, an' the last of the dried lemon to chew. That Bethel's idea; Mist' Cullen jus' told her water."

"How are they making out?" asked Mary.

The child shrugged. "They never finish that patch today," she said sagely. "Not if they work straigh' through 'til nightfall. Elijah says they too many plants for four folks t' work. Them suckers keep growin' an' growin'."

Mary had only a rudimentary understanding of tobacco cultivation, but coming from a land of wheat fields and apple orchards she had been appalled by the constant attention the plants required. Her polite interest in the neighbor ladies' stories of their own plantations had left her with the distinct impression that cotton was not such a demanding crop, either. It seemed like Cullen and the other two men spent every hour from the middle of January to the end of October fiddling with the plants, and Lottie's summary of the situation was a very apt one.

"What about the heat? Is everyone holding up all right?" Her eyes flicked to the window. Beyond the shadow of the house the countryside fairly glowed beneath the fierce sun, and the humidity hung heavy in the air. She knew the Atlantic heat of a New York summer, but this subtropical Southern mugginess was another thing entirely. Even after four years she hadn't adapted to it, and she wondered privately how anyone ever could.

"Don' know. I s'pose so. They all still workin', anyhow. Mist' Cullen, he say she's a scorcher."

"Come see my horses," Gabe demanded, tired of tugging on his playmate's leg.

"Which horses you got?" said Lottie in an earnest and attentive voice as though she had not seen the toys a thousand times before. Gabe scampered around the bed and the girl hurried after him, crossing her legs as she dropped down on the rug. "Look here," she said, picking one up and rocking it through the air at a gallop. "This one look like Pike, don' he?"

Mary watched silently for a while, as Gabe enumerated the virtues of his herd in a three-year-old's drawling patois. Lottie listened patiently, here and there offering a comment that was always met with enthusiastic agreement. She was very good with him, and Mary knew she was lucky to have a child about the place. A ten-year-old had the stamina to keep pace with a toddler's boundless energy, and as his father's son Gabe seemed to have more than the usual share of that. Mary rocked her fan and leaned back more deeply into the cushions, her other hand slipping beneath the sheets to press her throbbing pelvis.

It didn't matter that she had only just begun to suspect her condition when it so abruptly ended: she was mourning the loss and all that might have been. She very much wanted to give her husband another child. Cullen doted on Gabe, and he was the most attentive of fathers. He ought to have a whole posse of sons, and whenever she watched him with Lottie she longed to see him petting over a little girl of their own. It was past time to be thinking of a new baby, with their first one now three. She had been so eager to tell him of her expectations, and now she was glad she had not. She had implored Doctor Whitehead to keep her secret and reluctantly he had agreed. Laden as he was with work and worry, Cullen didn't need another yoke to carry. He would be devastated if he ever found out, and that was the last thing she wanted. He shouldered so many burdens for the family; she could bear this one alone.

_*discidium*_

The sun was well past its zenith, but the day seemed to grow still hotter as the hours dragged on. The four stooped figures still progressed steadily down the rows, but their movements were stilted now; no slower, but tangibly more pained. In the brief interval of straightening between one plant and the next, Cullen caught sight of Nate kneading at the base of his neck with a sticky fist. The gesture, a rare show of mortality from a man who seemed bent on resisting life's ravages to the last, struck him more deeply than his own myriad agonies, and he swore quietly under his breath. Five straight days of topping tobacco was brutal enough, but it looked like they'd be out here tomorrow as well. He could feel his hips stiffening under the smothering weight of the oilcloth, and he wondered whether any of them would be able to hobble out to the field in the morning.

As he reached the lowest point of his stoop he spat copiously into the dirt – no longer mud except at the very base of the plant where the shelter was thickest and the dew still dripped from the wide leaves. Despite a constant tormenting thirst that sent him staggering after water at the end of every second row, he could not stop salivating. He had taken advantage of the break precipitated by Lottie's arrival to eat his second sandwich, handing off the peach to Meg, but it sat like a stone in his stomach and shifted sickeningly every time he bent. He wasn't hungry; not by a long shot. Yet here he was, slavering like a mad dog. He straightened, careful not to do so too quickly. His headache had deepened through the day, and he kept falling prey to bouts of dizziness. Most often he could quell it by screwing his eyes closed and keeping perfectly still for a breath or two, but once he had been obliged to sit down between the rows and lower his head onto his knees for a full minute before he dared to get up again.

If he'd ever had a more miserable day's work he couldn't remember it. Even his first turn in the tobacco, shocking as it had been to a body that, though young and fit, had never before been put to hard labor, could not compare to this. Every muscle was afire, and his bones seemed to grind on one another as he moved. His wet clothes clung to him, heavy and impossibly hot in the relentless sunshine. He was faintly surprised that there was no steam rising off of his shoulders. Nate and Elijah had long since shucked their shirts, and Cullen was envious. But he wasn't comfortable with the notion of stripping down while there were womenfolk about, and he had to content himself with rolling his sleeves up to the elbow and undoing the two buttons right under his collar. The cotton bag cut into his shoulder now, heavy with the harvest of rubbish, and he couldn't quite shake a feeling of unsteady sickness.

A dark spot on the horizon caught his eye and he squinted from under the brim of his straw hat. It too was sodden now, soaked with his sweat and streaked with stains of tar from his attempts to adjust the drooping brim. He would have to put it on the hat-block tonight, or it would shrink as it dried and be too tight to ram on in the morning. The shape on the horizon wheeled and drew closer, coming down from the next rise through the empty pasture. It was a horse and rider, and he recognized the former first. It was Napoleon: Abel Sutcliffe's prized Thoroughbred stallion.

"Damn it to hell," Cullen muttered, ducking more swiftly than was necessary or prudent to attack the next plant. He was in no mood to wrangle his difficult neighbor, and his current state wasn't going to make the encounter any easier.

He spared a minute to hope that Sutcliffe was only trespassing: passing through on an afternoon gallop. The land slowly slipping back into wilderness was a popular destination for local riders whose own properties were thick with cotton and outbuildings and people. Cullen didn't care if his neighbors used his empty acres as a sort of open racecourse, so long as they didn't churn up the fallow fields or let their mounts graze in his corn. This easygoing attitude was one of the few things that helped to keep something of his family's old standing in the community – useful at times – and it cost him nothing.

But as he shuffled to the next plant he saw that the horse was making straight for the edge of the field, where Nate was coming up on the end of a row. Bowing low again, he dug into his sleeve for his rumpled handkerchief and tried to scrub the worst of the grime from his face. As the square of linen was soaked with sweat and blotched with tobacco sap itself, he didn't imagine it was doing much good. Then with a fit of self-loathing he thrust it back where it belonged. What did he care how he looked? It was only Abel Sutcliffe, who despite his money and his breeding wasn't any sort of a man. Cullen got back to questing for suckers, determined to look as though he had not even seen the rider approaching.

Napoleon let out a proud whinny as he was reined in to a halt, and Sutcliffe surveyed the field with the disdainful eye of a cotton planter who thought tobacco a second-class crop. He was a tall man of about fifty; blonde hair going grey, and a long patrician face dominated by a thin mouth that always seemed curled ever so slightly in scorn of the world. Hardly even casting an eye at the broad-shouldered Negro beside whose row he had halted, he said. "You! Boy."

Nate straightened his back but kept his head bowed and his shoulders stooped. His ordinarily intelligent face melted into a look of solid stupidity. "Yes, Massa," he drawled. Only those who knew him well could recognize the note of sarcasm in his servile whine. He shambled with exaggerated heaviness to the end of the row, but halted well out of range of the planter's glossy black riding crop.

Sutcliffe looked over the tobacco again, his eyes catching briefly on Cullen's stooped form. Watching from under the bridge of his hat, the younger landowner was not at all certain he had even been truly seen by the rider. There was no doubt at all he had not been recognized. The cold eyes slid next to Elijah and paused even more briefly there, and then settled on Meg. She was bowed low, digging among the bottom leaves, and her wet skirt was clinging to the contours of her legs. Cullen felt a hot wave of rage as Sutcliffe's eyes lingered there, and he restrained the urge to lob a clod of dirt at the white felt hat perched jauntily on the man's narrow head.

"Where's your master?" Sutcliffe demanded coolly, in the voice one might use when speaking to an idiot or a very young child.

Nate scratched the back of his neck with one long finger. "Mist' Bohannon?" he asked.

"Have you another master?" The exasperation in the man's voice was evident, and Cullen started marshalling his will in case he had to step in between his neighbor and his man.

"Nawssir," said Nate. "I reckon he the only one."

"Where _is_ he?" asked Sutcliffe, more condescendingly still.

As Cullen moved to the next hill the planter's eyes flicked to follow the motion, and then flicked away. It was remarkable, Cullen thought. He had apparently achieved invisibility. He looked down at his hands and arms, stained dark with tobacco juice and crusted with muck. With the shadow of his wilting hat over his face, he supposed the other man couldn't even be sure he was white. The thought amused him.

Nate was shrugging expansively. "Ohh…" he said slowly. "I 'spects he 'round here somewhere."

"_Where_?" The flaring irritation was tempered by a paternalistic resolve to get what he wanted out of the Negro he had chosen to approach. "Up at the house?"

"Nawssir. Not the house, not in the middle of the day. Only Mistress an' the young Massa up at the house in the middle of the day."

Cullen took advantage of his stooped position to snigger into the broad leaves. He wasn't sure whether Nate was actually trying to drive the man off, or only having a private laugh at his expense, but either way he thoroughly approved. Of course for the sake of propriety he would have to have a word with Nate later about being to uppity with white folks, but he could take the sting off of that with a dram of his hoarded whiskey and a well-timed smirk.

"Then where is he, you black oaf? I haven't got all day!"

There was a dangerous note in Sutcliffe's voice now, and Nate bristled a little. Deciding that the fun had gone on long enough, Cullen stowed his handful of suckers and straightened his back. He took off his hat and made a great show of drawing his forearm across his dripping brow before seeming to catch sight of the rider.

"Ah, Abel!" he said loudly. "I didn't see you there!"

Startled at hearing his Christian name apparently coming from a field full of slaves, Sutcliffe looked around in momentary confusion. Cullen came striding down the row, and derived some satisfaction from the look of astonishment when the planter actually saw him at last after having looked at him no less than three times already.

"Bohannon!" he exclaimed. Then his eyes took in the sodden work clothes, the filthy hands, the ragged straw hat, the tangled and sweat-soaked hair. Cullen didn't doubt that there were streaks of tobacco juice across his forehead and nose, and his perspiration was glistening in the his whiskers. Sutcliffe's expression darkened and his sneering mouth tightened into a puckered purse. "I didn't mean to interrupt your… ah…"

"My day's work?" asked Cullen cheerfully. He looked up at the sun, deliberately shading his eyes so that his ragged fingernails were obvious. Sutcliffe's own were meticulously pared and polished, and his fingers twitched on the reins. "Nowhere near sundown yet. What did you expect I'd be doing at this hour?"

It was no secret in the county that the Bohannon plantation had long since fallen from its former splendor, and that despite his genteel upbringing its master was now more a yeoman farmer than a gentleman of leisure. Still, Cullen knew that most of the county imagined that his involvement didn't extend much beyond riding his own acres and currying his own horses – and of course the usual business of directing labour and making the executive decisions concerning crop choice and planting times. Only a few of his closest friends knew even that he hoed the corn, and he doubted there were more than three men around Meridian who so much as suspected that he worked the tobacco. It was so unthinkable that even those who whispered that he was a disgrace to a fine old local family would have never imagined this outrage.

It was plain that not only had Sutcliffe never imagined it, but he was having difficulty processing it when faced with irrefutable evidence. His eyes were goggling in a decidedly undignified manner, and he appeared at a loss for words.

Cullen got one foot up on the sod and cast an eye over his shoulder at Nate. The black man was watching the spectacle from under his eyebrows, his expression carefully neutral. "Those plants ain't goin' to top themselves," said Cullen lazily.

Nate shot him an unreadable look and then moved back to his place on the row. His swift obedience in the face of the merest suggestion of an order was likely lost on the wealthier planter, who thought that Negros had to be driven with a horsewhip, but Cullen felt his pride rising. He was more than this pristine man's equal, and he knew it.

"You want something, Abel, or you just come over here to make conversation?" he asked pleasantly.

Again taken aback by the familiar and deliberately presumptuous form of address, Sutcliffe was jerked out of his gawking. His eyes narrowed and his nose wrinkled ever so faintly. "As a matter of fact yes, Bohannon. I wanted to speak to you about your west pasture. I was riding through it the other day—"

"You were trespassing then, weren't you?" Cullen grinned. "'Round these parts trespassers have been known to wind up the wrong side of a load of buckshot." He was speaking from personal experience, but that did not seem germane to the conversation.

Sutcliffe's lips twitched tersely. "You have never minded before."

"That's so," said Cullen. "And I don't mind now, so long as it's only riding you're doing. Just my way of being neighbourly." His smile widened so that his teeth flashed in the sunlight.

"Anyhow," said Sutcliffe coldly. He had done his schooling in Richmond, as he never failed to remark when given the opportunity, and even after thirty years there was something of the Virginian in his accent. It struck Cullen as mighty pretentious and never failed to make him think that a good smack might do the man no harm. "I could not help but notice that some of the land out there appears to be going, as it were, _back to the wild_."

Cullen refrained from a derisive snort. That was hardly news. The stretch of land that bordered Hartwood Plantation had been left to grow free before he was born. There were trees there now tall enough to cut for telegraph poles. It made for a pleasant place to ride, and Mary sometimes went out there with Pike while Gabe was down for his afternoon nap. "One man's wilderness is another man's bridle path," he said. "I never was one to say the land oughta all be plowed under. Bit of nature here and there's no bad thing."

"Well, perhaps," said the planter. He raked his eyes over the younger man's dishevelled garments again. "The truth of it is that I have been looking to expand my cotton, and your wilds abut my top field. I came over to see whether we couldn't work out a fair price for two hundred acres."

Pulse quickening, Cullen's mind whirled through the arithmetic. Land in the county was scarce, and the last sale he'd had wind of had settled at ten dollars an acre. Of course, that was cleared land ready for planting, with a house and outbuildings and a freshwater stream, but even his overgrown ridge had to be worth a fair bit. Say six dollars an acre, or even five, and he'd raise a thousand dollars with a handshake. That was more than he could hope to bring in with the year's harvest: money for cornmeal and coffee and beef and kerosene, money for cloth to replace worn-out clothes, money for new boots for Nate and Elijah, shoes for Gabe, hairpins and stockings and a new corset for Mary. Money to lay by in the bank for next year's taxes. Money like that was insurance against a failed harvest. It would buy up half his worries. Hell, if he could talk Sutcliff up to seven dollars an acre he might even be able to take on an extra field hand; or maybe suggest two dollars an acre, and Meg's Peter in trade.

"What sort of a price did you have in mind?" he said with remarkable calm. The one thing he really excelled at was striking a good bargain. Without that skill he would not have even managed to break even on last year's crop.

"Now, it's wild land, and it's no secret it was played out even in your grandfather's day," Sutcliffe said thoughtfully; "but seeing as you're _such _a good neighbor I was thinking three dollars an acre might be fair."

"Three dollars an acre." It came out in a harsh half-laugh. "Land's worth three times that and you know it."

It wasn't really, and whether Sutcliffe knew it or not Nate certainly did. He ducked his head hastily into his tobacco plant so as not to let his thoughts about his master's temerity show.

"Three dollars an acre," Sutcliffe repeated. "I should think that given your _present_ _difficulties_ the money would be welcome." Yet again his eyes flicked over Cullen's body, settling this time on his grimy hands.

In that moment Cullen knew the truth. The man had come here planning to offer more – quite likely much more. If he had discovered his neighbor riding the land or measuring for a new fence or even mending the axel on the buckboard wagon he would have made it, too. But he had found Cullen stooped in the tobacco, doing work that Sutcliffe would have consigned to the lowliest of field hands. He knew now what straits the place was in and he thought he could nab himself a bargain. Steely eyes narrowed shrewdly.

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll make you a counteroffer, seeing as how I know what land prices are around here. Eight dollars an acre."

Sutcliffe sniffed and seemed about to speak. Cullen held up his hand, stained and sticky palm outward. "Don't try and tell me again it's played out. Nothing been planted there in thirty-five years. The only thing wrong with that land is it's covered in trees, and your overseers can make quick work of that. Two hundred acres at eight dollars an acre."

"Three dollars," said Sutcliffe.

Cullen sighed in a long-suffering manner and looked thoughtfully down at the grass. "You see, now you're just being insulting," he murmured. It was a tactic that sometimes served him well with the tobacco buyers, but it was also a risk. A man could take offence to the intimation.

"The way I see it, you're getting no good out of that land as it is," said Sutcliffe in a reasonable tone. "I can clear it this year and get in some winter wheat to loosen it up; put in cotton next year and you won't have to worry about jackrabbits getting into your fields out of those woods anymore."

"As it happens I like jackrabbits," Cullen retorted impudently.

"Of course you do," Sutcliffe said soothingly, his gentlemanly countenance only just concealing his sneer. "They make such a nice change from split peas and molasses."

Cullen lunged forward, launching his back foot out of the mud. His left arm swung as if he meant to wipe the mocking look off the man's sanctimonious face with a flying fist, but at the last moment he caught himself and closed his fingers on Napoleon's reins instead, gathering both sides together just under the bit. The horse only snorted a little and shifted one foreleg, but Sutcliffe jerked backward in the saddle, clearly alarmed. He recovered his composure quickly, however, and looked down the bridge of his nose contemptuously.

"Look what's become of you," he said in a soft hissing voice. "Duncan Bohannon's grandson, grubbing in the tobacco patch. Ground right down to poor white trash."

Fixing him with a glare that would have stopped the heart of many men, Cullen raised himself up to his full height despite the dragging anguish the motion sent through his back and shoulders. "Well now, _Abel_," he said slowly, enunciating each syllable with exquisite care. "I don't know how you was raised, but I never heard tell that good hard work made trash of honest men."

For a moment there was silence broken only by the distant rattle of a woodpecker digging for his dinner in the stretch of land under debate. Finally Abel Sutcliffe's stony expression softened into a sugary smile and his blue eyes glittered slyly. "Look, Bohannon," he said; "we both know three dollars is cheap for that land, and eight is pretty near ridiculous. What do you say to five dollars an acre?"

Cullen's painful grip on the reins loosened a little. His chin jerked ever so slightly upward. "Now that's more respectful," he said. "I can work with that. Say six-fifty, and we can settle this here and now."

"Five dollars is the most I'm willing to pay," said Sutcliffe. "And that's only if you sell me five hundred acres instead of two. Price for two hundred is three dollars an acre."

Again the lightning-quick mathematics lanced through Cullen's mind. Twenty-five hundred dollars: he had never hoped to see that kind of money again, not in one fell swoop and for nothing more than scrub bush and empty pasture. But then a pit formed in his chest as he realized what Sutcliffe really wanted. The Bohannon holdings came to exactly a thousand acres, counting the creek bottom on the northwest corner of the property. If he sold off five hundred it wouldn't be a plantation anymore, not even by the standards of the Census Bureau. If he took Sutcliffe's price then he really would be just a poor farmer and Sutcliffe could boast to everyone how he had got the better of the local square peg.

He let go of Napoleon and stepped back to the border where the grass met the dried mud of the tobacco field. He curled up his lip and with a quick slip of his jaw sent his mouthful of thin spittle flying from between his teeth. It struck the ground just under Sutcliffe's left stirrup, and the rich planter flinched in disgust.

"Get off my damned property," Cullen said imperiously. "Land's not for sale to you at any price. Get on out of here. _Get!_"

Sutcliffe's jaw worked soundlessly, but he could not seem to think of anything to say. Straightening himself in the saddle he gathered in the reins and clicked his tongue at the horse. Napoleon took a half-step backward and turned, and a moment later he was cantering back across the untilled fields towards the Hartwood property line.

Cullen stood fixed to the spot, posture rigid and head held high as he watched his neighbor go. Only when the dark spot that was horse and rider vanished into the shadow of the trees did he let his weary shoulders slump and his tormented spine relax. His head was ringing like a blacksmith's anvil, and the dizziness forgotten in his anger came sweeping back. He looked down at his right hand, which had closed into a fist and crushed the supple straw hat into a shapeless mess. Numbly he took hold of the brim with his left and tried to stretch it out into a wearable shape again. He jammed it down upon his head and turned tiredly back towards the tobacco.

Nate, Elijah and Meg had all stopped their work. They were standing erect by the plants they had been checking, and they were staring at him. Meg looked almost rapturous with awe. Elijah wore an expression that was something like pride. Nate's mouth was drawn into a long grim line.

"You shoulda jus' told him 'no' an' lef' it at that," he said dourly as Cullen stepped down into the dirt and walked back towards his place in the row. "Man like he make a powerful enemy, an' you don't need no enemies. Ain't no good ever come of whackin' a hornets' nest."

From out of the weariness that went so much deeper than the bone, Cullen found a broad magnetic grin. "Aw, shoot," he said cheerfully as he stooped again. "I didn't ever do that but once."


	4. Weary Nightfall

_Note: It's my birthday, and I'll post if I want to._

**Chapter Four: Weary Nightfall**

The sun was swinging low at last, large and red over the western horizon. Working the down rows the men had to squint into its fiery glow. Cullen had sent Meg back to the house a little over an hour ago, to tell Bethel he wouldn't be in until nightfall and to start on supper for Elijah and Nate. The heat still clung in a muggy blanket over the earth, and sweat still trickled down Cullen's back and ran into his eyes. Yet somehow he could not stop shivering, and his soaked clothes seemed to chill him. His fingers quaked so that it sometimes took three tries to get a good hold on one of the insidious little buds. His breath came heavily now, sore ribs protesting the labour of their rise and fall. He thought he had never felt so run-down and exhausted, and the fits of light-headedness when he straightened had gotten so bad that he didn't even try to stand upright anymore. He shuffled, back bent, from one plant to the next, working as quickly as he could. They were losing light fast, and there were still at least two dozen rows untouched: enough to keep all four of them working another half-day.

Nate was three-quarters of a row ahead of him now, and even Elijah had a few yards' lead. Neither of them seemed to be suffering from the inexplicable phantom cold that was at such perfect odds with his perspiring body and the hot air that he kept raking into his lungs. Cullen tried to shake his head as if by doing so he could throw off the foggy feeling of illness that was tugging at him, but the motion made him nauseous. He tried to focus on something else: on his host of anxieties, on the endless list of tasks that had been neglected this week for the suckering and would have to be taken up as soon as it was done, on his foolish refusal of Sutcliffe's money for the two hundred acres. It didn't work. He was too weary to think anymore: all he could do was bend a little lower and feel the coarse stalks and break off the new growth so the old growth might flourish.

He reached the end of an east-worked row and looked longingly down the length of the field to the oak tree beneath which half a bucket of water still stood with its dipper at the ready. He was wretchedly thirsty, but the pain in his hips and the ache in his knees made the walk seem far too long to be worth the return. Besides, he thought, the minutes he would spend trudging down there and back were minutes wasted; minutes when he wasn't picking. He shuffled past the rows his men were working, and started on a new one. He was working into the sunset now, and he kept his chin tucked to his chest in an attempt to shade his eyes.

A strange sound came through the heavy air; like a swarm of bees droning behind a heavy velvet curtain. Frowning, Cullen tried to follow the sound without looking up from his work. At last he realized it was coming from further up the field and that it was Elijah, singing softly to himself while he worked. Somewhere deep within a part of him chuckled. How the old man could find the strength or will to sing after thirteen hours of bowing and stooping he didn't know, but he could not help but admire his spirit. For his own part he wanted nothing more than to sink down onto the crumbling earth of the furrow and curl up into a ball. Maybe then he could get warm again. His teeth were clattering against one another and the faint breeze that would have been so welcome at midday sent a chill into his marrow.

Still he kept at it, no longer a man but only a tobacco-topping automaton. His fingers seemed to move of their own accord, and his smarting eyes squinted to make out the invaders under the heavy shadows of the leaves. He couldn't keep his palm cupped around the bits of waste anymore, and his left arm kept up a constant relaying motion between his right hand and the sack on his shoulder.

Then almost without warning he could no longer see what he was doing. His hands were indistinct shapes only a little darker than the land around them, and the tobacco plant was nothing but a nebulous presence somewhere about two feet from his nose. He froze, momentarily taken aback, and then fumbled for his handkerchief. He tied it loosely around the stalk of the plant, working by feel and by the faint glow of the last light on grubby linen that had once been pristinely white. Further down the field Nate and Elijah would be doing the same thing.

Not quite able to lift himself out of his slouch, Cullen turned and shuffled down the row, fanning his foot in front of him before each step to make sure he did not trod on the painstakingly tended hills. The sky was the same thick dark blue it had been when he stepped out into the yard that morning, and he could just make out the contours of the land and the shapes of the trees and the drying barn. High above the first stars were showing, but he could not crane his stiffened neck to look at them. Finally the toe of his boot struck the little lip of sod and he clambered up out of the tobacco field. He stood there for a moment, swaying in the twilight. Then he turned towards the dark hulk of the oak tree.

He felt a strong hand grip his shoulder, and turned to look at Nate. His body was silhouetted against the last pink traces of sunlight, but his features were almost indistinguishable.

"I'll get them buckets, Mist' Cullen," he said. "You head on back."

Cullen nodded his thanks, but his throat felt too dry and raw to speak. Strangely, almost frustratingly, he was still salivating. He took his bearings by the shadows of familiar landmarks and broke out in the direction of the dooryard. His steps were uneven and his course must have faltered at some point, because he reached his destination by slamming his left shoulder against the corner of the toolshed. Too tired even to curse, he groped his way around to the door. Inside he found the box of matches and lit the old tin lantern. His sore and tar-coated fingers fumbled with the buttons of the oilskin overalls, but at last he was able to let them fall about his feet. They did so with a soft squelching sound, still wet in spite of everything. He moved to pick them up and found he could not bend any further than the lowest tobacco-tending position. Instead he kicked at the heavy garment, snagging it with his toes and hoisting it high enough that he could grab hold. He hung them on their peg and looked stupidly at his woolen trousers where they dangled from the next one. They had been waiting there all day for him to come and fetch them back to the house. Nice work if you could find it.

Elijah came in and stripped off his own overalls. His cotton drawers were streaked with dark sap, and their knees were black with it. Cullen knew his own undergarments were in no better shape. Elijah tugged on his pants and thumbed the suspenders up into place, then grinned a grin that was rather short on teeth. "'Nother day done," he said philosophically. "Finish 'er tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow."

It was neither an affirmation nor a question, but a word saturated with all the soul-sucking frustration of a farmer's life. Cullen reached with an arm that felt ready to fall from its socket and took down his pants. He tried not to hold them with his whole hand, so as to avoid soiling them with the tobacco juice that coated it. He knew it was a futile endeavour, but still he felt bound to try. He looked down at his boots, and then made a faint attempt to shake his head. Never mind the damned pants, he thought. He'd only be getting them off again in a few minutes.

Nate came into the shed now, and went about his own shucking of gummy oilskins. He paused as he reached to hang them and frowned at his master.

"You bes' get up to that house 'fore Bethel come fetch you," he said. "You know she spen' all this time worryin'."

"Nothing to worry about," said Cullen thickly. "Good work today, both of you. I'll see you out there again at dawn tomorrow."

"Sure," said Nate. "Listen, you just stay in tonight an' let me take care of the stock. You white as an old haunt under that tan."

Despite himself Cullen bristled. "I can see to my own horses," he said stiffly.

"I know," said Nate. "But jus' you don't do it tonight. Get me some credit with ol' Bethel."

The tired ghost of a smile tugged at Cullen's cheeks. "You done something you shouldn't?" he asked. It was one of their childhood questions, bandied from about whenever one thought his playmate had been up to no good and might want to share the fun.

"Not yet," said Nate, almost playful despite his obvious weariness. "Boun' to happen someday, though."

Elijah said something about the mules, but Cullen didn't hear it. He dragged himself around Nate and out into the yard, stumbling past the chicken coop and somehow managing to lift his body up the back steps. He stopped at the door, leaning his head against the post and trying to gather his strength. If he went in there feeling as he felt at the moment Bethel would be sure to notice something was amiss, and he couldn't cope with too much of her fussing tonight.

From inside he heard Lottie's childish soprano raised in shocked protestation, and then Meg's voice saying proudly, "Then Mist' Cullen, he say 'Was you raised in a barn? Hard work don' make trash of no hones' man!'"

Bethel grunted, and Cullen could imagine the vindicated thrust of her chin as she did so. Then she said; "You two bes' run 'long now. Men'll be back soon an' wanting they suppers."

Cullen got himself off the doorframe just in time, stepping out of the way as the door swung open and Lottie came bounding out, still full of energy despite a sweltering day no doubt largely spent in running after Gabe. She was halfway through the yard by the time her mother stepped out onto the stoop, moving far more slowly but still with steady dignity. She didn't notice Cullen in the shadow behind the door, and moved off after her child towards the square of light spilling from the toolshed. Watching for a moment as if lost in thought, though it seemed his mind had finally snuffed itself out, Cullen turned at last and tugged at the back door. The toe of his boot caught on the threshold and he stumbled a little, catching himself against the dish dresser. From within the old china rattled, and Bethel turned from the kettle she had been hoisting onto the stove.

"What you doin', wanderin' round in your drawers?" she scolded reflexively, crossing the room and snatching his pants away from him. She examined them thoroughly, rubbing with her thumb at the places where his fingers had left smudges of tobacco juice, then folded them over her arm and gave his efforts the tacit approval of deeming the garment clean enough to be set on the kitchen table. "You was raised with better manners, Mist' Cullen, an' I know that."

"They'd only have to come off again," he muttered, grabbing for the edge of the table and easing himself down onto the corner of the bench. The boot jack was lying ready for him, and he used it to lever first one and then the other off his tired feet. As he had expected his socks were black with grime and the insidious tar that seemed to creep into every crevice. Not willing to try to reach down, he used the side of one foot to roll of the first one, and then hooked the bare great toe into the top of the other. His fingers, stiffening already, scrabbled at his shirtfront until Bethel, with an exasperated little noise, reached in to swat them away. In a trice she had his buttons undone, and she helped him out of the foul-smelling thing. Even before he could think about trying to roll up the hem of his undershirt she was easing one arm out of the sleeve in the same way she undressed Gabe.

"You anywhere near to finished?" she asked as she reached for the other cuff and repeated the process.

"Twenty rows left," he fibbed. It sounded as though his voice was coming through a railway tunnel, and Cullen had to fight to keep his eyes open. Even in the heat of the kitchen, so smothering in the summertime, he felt miserably cold. Bethel hoisted the undershirt over his head, and the tobacco tar that had soaked through to it tugged at the fine hairs of his chest and back. He grimaced a little at the sharp and superficial discomfort that distracted him momentarily from his much deeper aches. "Do 'em tomorrow."

"Whole week in the tobacco no good for any man," Bethel said darkly. "Bad enough you got to do that come pickin' time, never min' high summer."

"How is it you never worry about Elijah and Nate in the tobacco?" Cullen asked dimly. He curled forward over his lap and rested his arms on his thighs. Somehow it just seemed easier to keep his back bent.

"I said any man, didn' I?" demanded the old lady. "But Nate 'n Elijah was brung up to do it. They been out there every day since they was big 'nough to be call'd men. They's used to it, an' you ain't yet."

"I been at it three years now," he argued. "More or less."

"Three year ain't twenty, an' you know it!" Bethel said sharply. The kettle was bubbling and she hefted it off the stove, rounding to the far side of the table where the big tin washtub stood three-quarters full. She poured the steaming water in and bent to stir it with her hand. She lifted it, shook it, and dried it on her apron. "There," she announced. "Warm bu' not too warm. You scrub up good, now. Missus Mary waitin' for you in the dinin' room."

At this Cullen finally raised his leaden head. "In the dining room? She's out of bed?"

"Came down to give Mist' Gabe his supper," Bethel confirmed. "She ain' ready for her corsets, but she up out of bed. Lookin' better for it, too."

She retreated to the dining room door and put one hand on the latch. "Use plenty soap," she advised. "You look like the tar baby."

As she retreated Cullen tried to laugh at that, but it hurt too much. He struggled with the buttons on his drawers and then hooked his thumbs over the waistband before jimmying himself up by virtue of his left elbow and the table top. He shoved the filthy garment as low as he could, and then stood with some difficulty and pushed it the rest of the way with one foot and then the other. Naked now, he padded on tender heels to the tub and folded his long body into it. There was soap in a pot on the floor, and an old and much-stained sponge for scrubbing. He knew he could scour until he took off a layer of skin and he'd still be stained in black streaks, so he settled for rubbing away the stickiness and getting rid of the mud. The nail brush was also within easy reach, and he made the best use of it he could, but he was too tired to care much about doing a proper job. He was shivering again, though the water was perfectly tepid and the stove still radiated great waves of heat from the embers within. Hurriedly he struggled to get out of the tub so that he could wrap himself in the towel warming for him on a stool by the hearth.

_*discidium*_

Mary sat at her accustomed place at the table, waiting to welcome her husband in after his long day of work. She was wearing the cherry silk dressing gown that had been a part of her trousseau, belted with a sash over her nightgown. At home in New York it would have been unthinkable to be seen out of her bedroom in such dishabille, but here such things did not seem to matter quite so much. Part of that was there was no one about but Bethel, who seemed to share her belief that it would do Cullen good to see her out of bed even if she couldn't bear her corset yet. She knew that he had been worrying for her, and she knew that his concern was due at least in part to whatever vague diagnosis Doctor Whitehead had given him. He would rest easier if he had evidence that she was recovering.

The interminable wait ended at last, and the kitchen door swung open. Mary wanted to leap to her feet, but she restrained herself and rose slowly out of deference to her weakened body. Cullen was smiling, but his eyes were dull with fatigue and brightened only a little at the sight of her. He was moving stiffly, like a rheumy old man, but he came around to her before she could take more than a step towards him and bent to kiss her forehead.

"You look beautiful," he said softly. "You're feeling better?"

"Yes, much," she promised. Bethel, who had been waiting by the sideboard just beyond the glow of the lamp, retreated to the kitchen to fetch the master's supper. "Sit down," said Mary. "You must be so tired. When did you sneak out this morning?"

"Half-hour or so before dawn," said Cullen, tugging out his chair and then looking at hers where it stood at the ready. "I s'pose I really didn't wake you, then?"

Knowing that he would not sit until she did, Mary resumed her place and adjusted the smooth folds of the dressing gown. She seldom had occasion to wear it nowadays, and it made her feel curiously young and amorous despite her recent ordeal. Satisfied that she was settled, Cullen planted his palms on the table and eased himself down with a low grunt of relief. He was also half-dressed, wearing long drawers and an undershirt beneath his father's old smoking jacket, and his bare feet were tucked into a pair of down-at-heel slippers. He crossed his arms on the tabletop and stared down as though he wanted nothing more than to bury his head upon them and fall asleep where he sat.

"You didn't come to bed until midnight last night," Mary protested. Small wonder he looked so exhausted, if he had been abroad before the sun. "How did the picking go?"

"Suckering," corrected Cullen dully. "Hard work and not much to show for it. Gabe behave himself today?"

"Yes; I think the heat stole a little of his fire," said Mary, noting with relief that Cullen's expression brightened a little at the thought of their son. She studied his face in the warm glow of the kerosene flame. It was impossible to tell much about his color, but the fine lines just starting to appear at the corners of his mouth seemed deeper than their wont and his eyes were shadowed. She had known from her youth that farming was a hard life, but it seemed a very different thing when one was married to a farmer and watching him endure it. _Planter_, she corrected herself, somewhat chagrined. She was still a stranger to the intricacies of Southern etiquette, but she knew enough to realize that this distinction was somehow very important.

Bethel came in with a bowl of barley soup and a plate heaped high with food. She set both before Cullen, and then returned bearing a mug of steaming coffee in one hand and glass of water in the other. Apparently she had kept back a little of the dried lemon that afternoon, for there was a curl of rind floating in the clear fluid. Cullen shifted in his chair so that he was sitting a little straighter, and dragged the bowl towards him. He picked up the spoon that lay beside a clean napkin and started to eat.

Satisfied, Bethel retreated to the kitchen. The sounds of the washtub being bailed came through the door, left artfully ajar. Once Mary would have thought this a clever bit of servants' subterfuge of the sort her mother never would have tolerated from their Brooklyn-born housemaids. Now she was wise enough to understand that it was because Bethel was anxious and wanted to be immediately available if her hands were needed.

"You didn't finish, did you?" Mary asked, trying to keep her voice light and conversational.

Cullen grunted softly and shook his head, still intent upon the soup. His lips were cracked and sun-weathered, and even through the quilted cloth of the smoking jacket Mary could see the tightness in his back and shoulders. He was always so stiff and sore after working the tobacco, though he would never admit it. Once Mary had suggested that she too might be of use in the fields, if Meg was, and such a wild look had come into his eyes when he told her he wouldn't stand for it that she had never dared to raise the subject again. She thought of her quiet day, and she was smitten with sudden guilt. She could have been helping Bethel with the house, or out in the garden tying up pea-stalks with Lottie. She was not entirely useless around the plantation when she was well, even if he wouldn't let her help beyond the edge of the vegetable patch. But today, the hottest day they'd had all year, she had been lying abed like an invalid.

She sat back and let him eat in silence. He finished with the soup and moved on to the plate. Bethel had laid on a good nourishing supper: cold ham and new bread, mashed sweet potatoes from the root cellar, and peppered succotash. Lottie had gone out to thin the garden in the late afternoon when the heat was no longer quite so oppressive, and so there were dainty young radish greens cooked with butter, and tiny baby radishes on the side. Gabe had enjoyed this last treat especially, but Cullen hardly seemed to notice it. Indeed, from the disjointed way in which he lifted food to his mouth Mary could tell he did not really know what he was eating, nor did he care. He was too worn out.

He seemed to be having trouble with his fork, too; now fumbling to get a good hold, now dropping its contents. The flickering light again obscured clear sight, but after a couple of minutes of close observation Mary saw that his hands were shaking. He lodged the fork in one slice of ham and stared at it bewilderedly.

"Let me," said Mary gently, shifting her chair a little nearer and reaching for the fork and knife. While he watched the glinting silverware hypnotically she cut his meat for him, all the time torn between anxiety and sadness. The mere fact that he was allowing her to do this told more about the depths of his exhaustion than anything else.

When she was finished she put the fork back in his hand. "Finish up," she said. Cullen took two more clumsy mouthfuls and then let the fork fall onto the heap of enticing warm yams. "You should try to eat a little more than that," Mary coaxed.

"I'm not hungry," he said. He raised his hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose. "Headache," he mumbled before she could inquire. "C'n I have a drink? Please?"

"Coffee or water?" she asked, anticipating his answer and reaching for the coffee. "Bethel, did you put the sugar in this?" There was no need to raise her voice at all.

"It sweetened up like he wan' it," said Bethel from the kitchen. There was a dull ringing as something struck the empty tin tub.

Mary offered the china cup to Cullen, holding her palm beneath it in case his sore fingers should slip. He reached for it with a sun-browned hand scrubbed almost painfully clean but still stained with the dark tobacco sap. His thumb slipped through the handle and he raised it to his lips, sniffing in puzzlement. "Coffee?" he asked.

"Would you sooner have water? Fresh up from the well, and there's a bit of lemon for flavor," said Mary. She was starting to feel rather like she did when coping with Gabe's fussy days, trying her best to entice someone who was not in the mood to be swayed by any manner of food or drink.

"No,_ brandy_," he said in an irate voice. He seldom took such a tone with her, but Mary was glad of it now: it was the first real emotion she had heard from him. "Man says he wants a drink, he don't mean water."

"Bethel, would you bring the brandy bottle, please, and one of the small glasses?" she asked. She took the coffee from Cullen's loose grasp and put her hand on his arm.

"He don' need brandy," Bethel said, coming into the room and frowning at the master she had raised up from babyhood. "You don' need brandy. Nice cool water an' a good night sleep, that what you need."

"I need brandy," Cullen insisted. At last he raised his eyes, but he did not look at either of the women. Instead he stared into the lamp flame. "I did a damn fool thing today, Mary," he said bleakly.

"What is it?" she asked quietly, almost certain she knew what he was about to say. It could hardly be anything else, if it was driving him to use foul language in the house.

Suddenly deep crevices of care seemed to open in his face, deeply shadowed by the kerosene glow. In an instant he seemed to age ten years. "I just turned down six hundred dollars for land I have no earthly use for," he exhaled; a confession weighted with enormous weariness. "Six hundred dollars."

Mary nodded. "I know," she said. "Meg told us. You did the right thing: there wasn't anything else you could have done and still lived with yourself."

"It was still a damn fool thing to do," said Cullen, but he no longer looked quite so drawn. His eyes fell to his almost-full plate and he pushed it away. "What 'bout that brandy?"

"No brandy," Bethel insisted, crossing her thin arms and frowning at him.

Cullen rolled his eyes. "Who's master here?"

The frown only deepened. "You drink up that water an' finish your supper," she said. "Horses be waitin' to get theirs, an' then you goin' go straight to bed: no readin' an' figurin' tonight."

"Don't think I could if I wanted to," said Cullen, his lips tightening as he stretched his arm to take the water. "I'm not going out again: Nate offered to see to the stock."

"Good!" snapped Bethel, jerking her chin. She watched intently as he lifted the glass to his lips and took a wary sip. It seemed to awaken his thirst, for he tipped the vessel again and drained it in a series of hasty gulps. He set it heavily down and exhaled noisily before bestirring himself to blot at his mouth with the napkin. His eyes closed briefly, and on his lashes tiny salt crystals glistened where his perspiration had dried. He made no move to try to resume his meal.

"Where your appetite at?" Bethel asked. "Eat them greens, anyhow. They be no good tomorrow: jus' a waste to leave 'em."

Cullen opened his eyes to slits, rolling them to look at her without turning his head. He took in her unyielding expression and the insistent set of her jaw, and reached awkwardly for his fork. He munched tiredly on the tender little leaves, and when they were gone abandoned his plate again. Bethel picked it up and frowned at it, but she seemed mollified.

"I go fetch some more water," she said, scooping up the glass and disappearing into the kitchen.

Mary mustered a smile. "I think she's the only person on earth you'll actually listen to," she observed.

Her husband raised an unsteady hand to rub at his temple. "I still want a drop of brandy," he said. "This headache…"

"I'll go and get it," Mary promised, rising to her feet. As she passed him she let her hand trail down to rest on his shoulders. The muscles beneath her hand were strained and hard as knotted ropes. She pressed gently with her thumb, sweeping it in a slow arc towards his neck and pushing the tension with it.

Cullen let out a low moan. "Don't start a job you can't finish," he mumbled. "Time you get done it'll be sunup."

She turned so that she could lay a hand on the opposite shoulder too. She worked them together, gripping with her fingers and pressing with her palms. Her legs were unsteady after days in bed, but she braced her hip on the back of his chair and worked to the base of his neck. She didn't really know what she was doing, of course, but it didn't seem to matter. She could feel some of the miserable tightness leaving his flesh, and he sank a little lower in the chair as he began to relax. She made her way up towards his skull, fingertips twining in the fine damp hair at the nape of his neck. The side of her thumb seemed to snag against his skin, and she leaned down to squint into the shadow cast by his head. There was a dark smudge of tobacco sap just under his hairline, crusted and sticky.

"You missed a spot," she whispered, leaning forward to reach over his shoulder for the dinner napkin. Wetting a corner with her tongue, she wiped the offending blotch away. Its shadow remained, soaked through into his skin, but at least it wasn't gummy anymore. "How do you get tobacco juice all the way back here?"

"Tryin' to do for myself what you can do better," he drawled, reaching up to curl his fingers around her wrist. He drew her arm around his head and kissed her palm. "You got mighty gentle hands."

Mary felt the urge to slip around him and climb into his lap, but she restrained herself. She wasn't well enough yet for lovemaking, and he needed to lay by his strength for tomorrow's work. It would only be cruel to both of them if she instigated anything. _Don't start a job you can't finish_.

"I'll just go and get that brandy," she said quietly. As she disentangled her arm from his calloused but tender grasp, Bethel came up from the kitchen door.

"I got it," she said, setting one of the delicate cut-glass snifters that had been a wedding gift from one of Mary's father's business associates. Its bottom was covered with a thin layer of caramel-colored liquor. Cullen picked it up ham-fistedly and tipped it to his lips. He drained it in one quaff and swallowed.

"Thank you," he said. He sat still for a moment as if locked in some internal debate, and then gripped the edge of the table and got stiffly to his feet. "Think I can just about make it upstairs."

He shuffled into the hallway, one old slipper snagging for a moment on the edge of the rug. There was a creak as he took the first stair, and then his plodding footfalls moved up and away.

Mary turned to Bethel, who was gathering the remaining dishes. "Why did you change your mind?" she asked. "About the brandy, I mean."

The old woman looked suddenly very tired. "I was goin' dose him with anodyne powder for that headache, Missus, but we's all out," she said. "Turns out brandy the bes' I can do."

She shook her head sadly and moved from the room, leaving Mary alone in the ring of lamplight. After standing for a moment in silent contemplation, she went to the sideboard and lit a candle. Then she paused at the table to turn down the wick of the lamp, snuffing its flame for the night. Through the front corridor she passed, and up the stairs, expecting to find Cullen in their bedroom. Instead she came upon him as she rounded the corner at the top of the steps. He had one arm raised, elbow crooked so that he could lean against the wall with his head hanging between shoulder and forearm. He was staring through the darkness at the closed door to the nursery, and blinked slowly as the glow of the candle drew near. Mary put a hand on the crushed pile of his sleeve.

"I didn't even get to see him today," Cullen said heavily. Then he pushed off the wall and left her, trudging into their bedroom with an unmistakable stoop to his back.

Pausing to compose her expression, Mary lingered long enough that he was on the far side of the room when she reached the door. He had shed the smoking jacket and slippers, and he had his nightshirt crumpled in his hands, staring down at it as if he had never seen the thing before. Whether he was lost in some unhappy reverie or merely too stupid with fatigue to remember what he was supposed to do with the thing she did not know, but she came to her side of the bed and reached to pull down the coverlet.

"Never mind changing," she said. "You're nice and clean. Lie down."

He looked up at her as if momentarily surprised to see her, and then nodded slowly. The nightshirt slipped from his fingers and, with a stiff and jerking motion, climbed into bed. He struggled a little as he tried to get his feet under the blanket, and then sank deep into the feather tick as his body gave way to the temptation to relax at last.

Mary set down the candle on the table by the bed and took off her dressing gown, smoothing it carefully and tucking it away in the clothes press. "Tomorrow will be better," she promised. She took out a pair of her husband's oldest socks and a fresh work-shirt, setting them out on the chair in the corner. "You must be nearly finished, and then you can leave the tobacco to grow on its own for a little while. Maybe you can even come in for dinner, and see Gabe then. You needn't feel that he—'

She stopped as she turned back towards the bed. The pool of candlelight danced over her pillow and the soft white sheet exposed by the turned-back quilt. Lying at its edge, Cullen had made a halfhearted attempt to drag the bedclothes up over his body. His hand had fallen to the mattress at a level with his hip. His fingers were still curled around a fistful of the coverlet, but there was no strength in them now. He was already fast asleep.

Silently Mary crossed the room, stepping out of her bed-shoes and snuffing the candle. By the faint glow of moonlight filtering around the muslin curtains she climbed carefully into bed, drawing up sheet and quilt into her lap. She reached over and carefully covered Cullen's rounded back, and then with her fingertips plucked up a stray curl that had stuck itself to his cheek and hooked it around his ear. She eased herself down beneath the covers, the deep muscles of her abdomen protesting a little. Nestled beside her husband, she closed her eyes.


	5. Tobacco Sickness

**Chapter Five: Tobacco Sickness**

When she awoke in the very heart of the night to the sense that something was amiss, Mary was not immediately certain what had roused her. It was not the heat, for she had come to her senses too abruptly. It was not her son, for she had neither heard him cry out from his nursery nor felt his small hand upon her arm. The bedroom was still and silent in the darkness, and beyond the open window the dooryard was peaceful. Down in the creek-bottom the crickets were singing, but that small sound had never troubled her. Nor was it her pain that had disturbed her, for the ache was dull and quiet now and she could feel her body settling slowly back into normalcy.

Then at last she realized the source of her disconcertion. Cullen was awake beside her, curled in towards the middle of the bed. He had his side of the quilt pulled up right under his chin, and although his whole body was rigid with the effort of remaining still he could not quite disguise the fact that he was shivering.

"What is it?" Mary murmured, turning in. His head was a mass of deeper black against the gloom of the room, but she caught the faintest glint of his eyes in the diffuse moonlight. For a moment his muscles released and the ticking between them rippled.

"Didn't mean to wake you," he whispered. His voice came through clenched teeth, almost but not quite stuttering. "I'm just… so damned cold."

This made no sense at all. The room was still thick with the heat of the day, and the air outside was not much cooler. Mary reached out to find her husband's forehead, feeling first it and then his left cheek with the back of her hand. His skin was slick with sweat, as was to be expected on a summer night, but it was neither clammy nor abnormally hot.

"You don't have a fever," she said worriedly. She shifted closer to him and slipped her arm around his chest. Now she could feel the shaking right into his ribs. He was hugging himself in an attempt to control it and as he let out an unsteady breath his teeth clacked against one another. As she spread her palm over his spine he got his top foot up behind the opposite knee and pushed nearer, drawn to the warmth of her body. She guided his head down against her shoulder and tried to adjust his pillow to support the shift.

"Feel like I'm frozen," Cullen mumbled. He bowed in closer still, and his nose brushed the hollow beneath her collarbone. His foot brushed her leg, and it too was comfortably warm. She could feel his heart racing through the muscles of his back, and she tried to pull the quilt more snugly around him.

"I'll go fetch another blanket," she said. She started to roll to her right, but he seized the front of her nightgown and clung to her.

"D-Don't," he stammered as his lips gave an involuntary spasm. He was pressing his whole front against her now, and she replaced the arm over his flank. "You're warm."

She let him lie like that until the frantic grip of his fingers eased and some of the tension ebbed out of his neck. He was warming or the fit was passing, because the tremors faded from a constant concussive shaking to the occasional shiver. He was panting with the effort of warming himself against whatever ghostly force had chilled him, and Mary found herself tracing reflexive circles on his back as she might have done to comfort Gabe in the wake of a nightmare.

"Perhaps you're ill," she said. "We could send Nate for the doctor."

"I don't need a doctor," Cullen mumbled. "I just need to get warm again."

"But why are you cold?" asked Mary.

His bottom shoulder jerked against the tick in an approximation of a shrug. "Workin' all day in wet clothes, I guess." His words were coming thickly now, as if he were fighting off sleep. Another spasm took him and then he was very still in her arms, the heat of his breath coming in waves through her linen nightgown. "Be all right directly," he sighed.

Mary pursed her lips, and then pressed her cheek to the crown of his head. She was pushed up awkwardly towards the headboard, but she did not dare to move lest she disturb him. His chest began to rise and fall with the slow rhythm of sleep but his fingers did not release their hold on the delicate pintucks between her breasts. Gently she slipped her arm out from under the coverlet, which she smoothed snugly against his back. Her hand travelled up to rest near the nape of his neck so that his upper arm supported her elbow in a more comfortable position. Her fingertips brushed the bare skin above the collar of his undershirt and she confirmed her initial assessment. He was not running a fever.

She felt a sudden longing for Bethel's experienced opinion. Bethel would know what was wrong, and whether the doctor ought to be sent for. She didn't really think they could afford to have him in twice in a single week, but they would manage if they had to. They certainly couldn't afford to have Cullen take sick, not this time of year. His pet assertion that the slaves knew their business notwithstanding, every man on the place was needed. Again Mary was stricken with her own uselessness. He might have been better off marrying some farm girl, or even a planter's daughter who knew a thing or two about how to manage a Southern household. Instead he had picked a New York debutante who didn't even have much of a grasp of home remedies. She couldn't imagine what might be wrong with him, that he should awake shivering on a balmy summer night, and she certainly didn't know what she ought to do for him. All she could do was lie here and hold him while he slept.

He stirred against her and mumbled something in whatever unsettled dream was gripping him. His left foot kicked reflexively at the mattress. Though he slumbered on she could feel the overworked sinews of his back flicking and twitching beneath her palm.

_*discidium_*

"_Look-here, what-cheer! Look-here! Chuck-uh-huh-huh._"

The trill of the oriole that nested somewhere down in the peach grove woke Nate up, as it did most mornings. That bird had an uncanny way of sensing the dawn still more than an hour off, and it never failed to call out to hurry Old Mister Sun along. It sure wouldn't sing like that if it had to be the one out breaking its back in the tobacco, but Nate supposed there were worse ways to be rousted out of bed. Over at Hartwood there was a great big gong in the yard at the quarters, and a little black boy who had to be up while the owls were still flying so he could beat it to wake the rest of the slaves. Here it was nothing but that damned cheerful bird, telling him to "look here" and get on with his work.

Reluctantly Nate rolled off of his stomach, the straw crackling in his mattress and letting off a faint scent of lavender. The new mistress insisted on putting dried flowers in with the Negroes' tick-stuffing; some fool city notion about it being healthier, or good luck, or whatnot. She was a strange one, Missus Mary. Sweet and well meaning, but strange. But then Nate guessed all Yankees had to be a bit strange. They were Yankees, after all.

Nate punched his pillow and pushed himself up so that he was sitting on the bunk. His feet slapped down on the floorboards, and he wriggled his toes against wood worn smooth by countless such landings. On most places a field hand like him wouldn't have a wood floor in his cabin, but in Duncan Bohannon's day this had been a fifty-hand place and though the crowds of slaves were gone their lodgings remained. Those who were left had their pick of the best of them. In wintertime he and Elijah shared the old foreman's cabin to save on wood and keep each other company in the long evenings, but in summer Nate had a luxury even rarer for a black man than a gentle awakening: privacy.

He sat where he was for a minute, back rounded and head bowed. The aches of yesterday's work were deep in his bones, and he didn't much want to get moving today. He hated tobacco-topping time, and twenty years of working the stuff hadn't done a thing to change that. It was hard on a man's soul, stooping and scraping, and the pain got right into the marrow. He reached up to knead at his shoulder with one broad, calloused hand. Summertime was misery time, and no mistake.

With a thick grunt Nate hefted himself to his feet and stumped over to the little pine table where he'd flung his clothes the night before. He'd worn his drawers to bed, so all he had to do was step into his trousers and pull on his shirt. It was still damp from yesterday, and the tobacco sap caught at his skin, but he did up the buttons anyhow and hoisted his suspenders. He had two other work shirts, but he didn't see any sense in fouling them up with mud and tar when this one was already dirty. He rammed his feet into his boots, which were wearing thin in the sole but couldn't be replaced, and stumped out into the gloom.

The door of Meg's cabin stood open to let the air in, and the light of her earthenware lamp spilled out onto the packed earth of the stoop. Meg and Lottie had the best of the cabins: the one Bethel and her husband had had once, before Mister Cullen's mother had died and Old Mister Bohannon had brought Bethel up to the house to care for him. Bethel's husband had been Old Mister Bohannon's manservant, so naturally he'd gone with her. After that it had been Nate's folks who lived in the big cabin, but after the field hands had all been taken by the bank it had seemed natural for Meg and her baby to take the place – not just because Meg had a child to look after, but because she served up the meals for the other slaves and that cabin was the only one with room for the big table.

Nate hesitated in the open air, not quite wanting to go in without Elijah. He'd carried a torch for Meg ever since he was seventeen, but she'd fallen in love with that big black boy who was now foreman over at Hartwood. Nate didn't know if she'd ever suspected his affections, as the new mistress might say, but he found it uncomfortable to be alone with her nonetheless. Lottie's presence never helped matters, because when it was just the three of them Nate sometimes found himself imagined Meg was his wife and Lottie their little girl – and he knew that wasn't right. The Bible said a man shouldn't covet his neighbor's wife.

He shuffled over to Elijah's cabin and hammered on the door. An indistinct grunt came from within. "Time to get up, ol' horse!" Nate called. "Breakfast be ready soon, an' we got to get through that top field today. Come Monday them suckers' be takin' the life right out the leaves."

The door opened like a cork pushed from a popgun and Elijah's scowl showed faintly on his wrinkled dark face. "I'm up!" he said. "What you think I'd be doin' lyin' abed this late? You ain't got much respec' for an ol' hand, do you?"

"I figured you might be sore after las' night. We got no business being out there 'til sunset. Ain't right." Nate offered the older man his arm to balance against as he took the wooden step, but Elijah swatted him away.

"Work got be done," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "An' Mist' Cullen didn' ask us to be out there any longer than his own self. I tell you when that boy were runnin' wild, comin' home drunk mos' nights when he come home at all an' gettin' in fights with the other gent'man's sons an' catchin' a rump full o' shot doin' who-knows-what, I never thought he'd 'mount to much." He shook his head. "He a better man 'n his pappy, that I can say."

Nate grunted noncommittally, not wanting to agree but not able to argue. He had been doing his fair share of thinking since yesterday morning, and he had, in fact, been running a careful comparison between Mister Cullen and his father. Nate had been waiting all year for some suggestion that Lottie was old enough to start working in the fields, and it had been a surprise when it came from Bethel instead of the master. But then Bethel had a say in most decisions made around the plantation, and she had never taken to the idea of Mister Cullen laboring like a field hand. Still Nate had expected that the suggestion, once made, would be immediately implemented, and he had been bottling up his anger against the day when it was. Mister Cullen's father had put him into the tobacco when he had been only a little older and not an inch bigger than Lottie was now, and he remembered the misery of those early years. The old master hadn't had nearly as much incentive to promote Nate to adult toil, either. He'd never so much as toted a hoe, much less bent his skinny white back to grub for suckers. And here was his son, working from sunup to sundown right along with the Negroes and at the same time refusing to put a ten-year-old into the tobacco. Not that they couldn't use her: there was too much work for four people, and even a child would make a difference in the load. But it wasn't right, working a little thing like Lottie in the wet fields, and Mister Cullen actually seemed to understand that. It put him a cut above most white folks, and no mistake.

The only trouble with this was that it unsettled Nate's longstanding resentment; a resentment hatched on that first painful morning in the fields and nursed slowly through the years. It had come over him gradually, scarcely noticeable in his early adolescence but deepening in the long seasons after his one-time friend had gone away to university. They had grown up side by side, Nate and the master's son, and suddenly one was away at school in Tuscaloosa learning to be a fine gentleman and the other was sweating in the sun; dirty, illiterate, and robbed of any choice regarding his own destiny. When Mister Cullen had returned, practically unchanged, Nate had hardly been able to look at his old friend without bitterness boiling in his veins.

Even now, with the old master dead and hard times come, Nate was reluctant to think well of his owner. If Mister Cullen had lost the wealth he'd grown up with, that was just bad luck and poor management. If he worried about money, that was on account of the fact he owned too much land and not enough slaves. If he treated his Negroes better than anyone else in the neighborhood, that was only because Bethel had raised him up right. And if he had to bend his back like the rest of them, at least he was working his own lands through his own choice. He wasn't trapped here by anything.

But the matter of Lottie, that was something different. There was not a thing in the world to stop him putting her right in with the rest of them if he wanted to. The other planters would've done it that spring, and no doubt about it. He'd even had Bethel's approval, at least to have the girl _start_ taking on some of the work, and that meant more to him than public opinion. Yet he had still refused to do it. Deep in his heart Nate knew his old playmate had real worth to him, but he preferred not to see it. Something like this, though, made it impossible to ignore.

Elijah shouted back to him from the door of Meg's cabin, and Nate shook off his befuddled musings. He knew that all five of them had it better here than they would anywhere else nearby, but he couldn't quite bring himself to be grateful. No matter how he looked at it he always came up upon that one immutable fact: Mister Cullen _owned _them, and as bearable as life was under his ownership, they still weren't free.

He ducked his head to pass through the doorway, and took his usual place on the bench. Meg was at the stove, mixing butter and salt into the pot of hominy. The stove was a good one: a cast-iron thing with three lids and an oven. It had been the cookstove up at the house until Mister Cullen had come back from New York with a Yankee wife. He had bought her a new, modern stove as a wedding gift: a stove that burned cleaner and had two deep oven chambers that got hot enough for baking the outlandish Northern dainties that Missus Mary liked to make. But there was nothing wrong with the old stove, and it was Meg's pride and joy. She said it made cooking a pleasure, and she kept it glossy with a bucket of blacking she stored behind it.

On the other side of the room in the broad lower bunk, Lottie was still fast asleep with the quilt pulled up over her head and one bare foot sticking out over the edge of the tick. It did Nate good to see her, and to know that however his own back might ache and his own hips grind, at least she wouldn't be out there beside him struggling to keep pace with the adults.

The coffee was on the table, and Elijah poured it out. Meg used chicory in her brew to make the beans stretch farther, and the result was a full rich flavor that woke a man up and got him ready for his day. Elijah liked a dollop of sorghum in his, but Nate took it plain. He knocked back half the contents of his tin mug and reached for the pot to top it off.

"You men sore?" Meg asked, as if she hadn't been right out there with them until the last two hours of the brutally long day. Meg was a treasure, and Nate felt a stab of jealousy. He hoped Peter appreciated what he had in her. She came from the stove and set down two laden plates, then went to fill her own.

"No more'n usual," said Elijah. "What 'bout you? You work hard yesterday."

"Everyone work hard," said Meg. She looked over her shoulder towards her sleeping child, and smiled a little. There was almost a reverent tone in her voice as she repeated, "Everyone work hard."

She sat down on beside Elijah and tucked into her food. The breakfast was generous, and well-prepared. Nate scowled at it. Just another reason to feel uncomfortable, the way the master and mistress went about doling out food. What Bethel served up to the family wasn't supposed to be any of his business, but the underworked plantation was a small community and Nate had a way of getting to know things. The only difference between his breakfast and what the master was eating up at the house right this minute was that Nate got fresh corn pone right out of the skillet, and the master ate day-old wheat flour biscuits. Biting into the fluffy golden pan-bread, he wasn't at all sure the master was getting the better part of that bargain.

A low whine came from the doorway. Jeb was sitting on the stoop, too well-trained to enter the house but too eager to sit quietly. The old hound wagged his tail eagerly as Nate looked up, and the man grinned at him. "Massa up already?" he asked. Then he tore off a chunk of side-meat and tossed it to the dog. Jeb wasn't old enough to miss a trick, and he caught it in his jaws and retreated into the dim blue-grey world to devour it.

"You know he allus is," said Meg. "I never see'd a white man work like he do. I didn' think they even could. You know he look sick yesterday, an' still he out there 'til nightfall."

Nate sighed and scooped up another forkful of hominy grits. It was true: Mister Cullen _had_ looked sick, even as early as noontime. With white folks it was always so easy to tell: the color went right out of their faces and they got a kind of greenish-grey look. He'd been spitting an awful lot, too, and that wasn't natural on a hot day when he didn't take water any more often than the rest of them. And by the end of the day he'd had a dazed and dizzy air about him as if he couldn't even think anymore. Nate had thought he didn't look fit to be working, but it wasn't his place to say. Mister Cullen would only tell him to mind his business and remind him that every one of them was needed to get the job done. And he'd be right. Sickening or not they needed the master out there today. There just weren't enough hands for the work otherwise.

Elijah was washing down the last of his cornbread with another cup of coffee, and Nate hurriedly sopped up the gravy on his plate and did the same. Meg was still finishing her meal, but she ate more quickly now. She had to go down to see to the three milch cows before she went out to the fields, while the men were up in the stable. In summertime no one had an extra moment to spare in lingering.

As the two men struck out into the dim morning, they heard Meg call to her daughter. "Time t'get up, Lottie: them chickens'll be scratchin' soon."

Coming out through the willows Nate saw the glow of the lamplight in the windows of the kitchen. There was a thin stripe of golden light glowing from the upper floor, too: it seemed the mistress was up already. He was glad of that. Her illness, whatever it had been, had sent ripples of worry through the small world of the plantation. She was peculiar, and she was a Yankee, but he'd never wish her harm.

The lamp in the stables was lighted already, and Nate came in to find Mister Cullen taking feed for the horses. His eyes were fixed on the scoop, which shuddered a little each time he tried to lift it, and his face was haggard as if with suffering beyond what might be expected even after five days in the tobacco. When he became aware of the dark eyes staring at him, he looked up in irritation.

"Something paining you, Nate?" he asked, shaking down the pail full of grain and adding another trowelful.

"Nawsir," said Nate. His heavy brows furrowed. "You feelin' all right today, Mist' Cullen?"

"I'm stiffer 'n a cattail stalk, and I've got the kind of a headache you don't ordinarily find outside of a bottle, but I'm all right," he answered. "You?"

Nate frowned. "Me?"

"You feelin' all right? 'Cause I don't see you rubbing down them mules." Then he turned around to tip the feed into the mare's stall.

Shaking his head, Nate went about his morning chores. It wasn't his business, he told himself. Whatever was wrong, if it hadn't been enough to keep the master in bed it wasn't his place to suggest it. As he pitched hay for the mules he looked down to the far end of the barn. Elijah was cleaning out Pike's stall, and Mister Cullen was holding the horse while he did. He was leaning heavily against Pike's shoulder, and his face was buried in the horse's mane. He didn't look fit to be heading out into the dew, not at all.

"What say we three black folks take the tobacco today," Nate said, surprising himself. "That wagon axle need mendin', an' you the bes' man fo' that job."

"Tobacco shouldn't take us more than half a day," the master mumbled. "I'll see to the wagon this afternoon." He swayed a little as he led Pike back into his stall, but steadied himself against the gate and set his jaw determinedly. "The quicker we get it done, the better we'll all feel about it."

They would be lucky to have another week before they had to get in there and start all over again, but Nate did not venture this opinion. Elijah had been needling the master about putting in too many plants, but Nate could do his own figuring and he didn't think they'd put in enough; not enough to raise the money needed for another year. They were getting so they could see the end of the stores already, and it was only July. There'd be debts to pay off come fall, and unless Mister Cullen made a miracle of a bargain selling what they had the place would be in trouble.

Privately he thought that the master should have sold off that land yesterday. They couldn't work it anyway, not without at least ten more hands. Certainly he never should have settled the matter with such finality. He could have pretended like he needed to think it over and left the opportunity open. Maybe Sutcliffe would've spooked and offered a better price. At least if Mister Cullen hadn't spat at him there'd have been a chance to sell later if money got too tight. But Mister Cullen was the most prideful man Nate had ever known, and that talk of white trash had been too much for him to take. He always did stupid things when his dignity was hurting, and that had definitely been a stupid thing to do.

When they finished with the stock and headed out to the toolshed, Nate kept a sharp eye on his master's lean figure. He was trudging heavily, much as he had the previous morning in spite of his efforts to hide his soreness, but he kept a straight line as he walked and he didn't stumble. Only once they had changed into their oilskins and met up with Meg did he seem to run into trouble. They each took up their two buckets as usual: some water for drinking, some for dousing overheated heads. But Mister Cullen's arms trembled under the weight, and he kept slopping water over the side of the buckets, drenching the lower legs of his overalls. He was going to be half-soaked even before they got to the field.

Because they would be starting at the far end and working back to the plants they had marked last night, they left only four of the pails in the shade of the oak tree and took the other four with them. Water left in full sun would lose its coolness much faster, but the time they'd save not having to run back and forth was too valuable. Meg tied the red rag around the washing bucket so they wouldn't foul the drinking-water by mistake, and then she took up the very last row. Mister Cullen didn't say one word as he stepped down into the mud. He just hitched his cotton bag higher on his shoulder and bent down to work. In the growing light of dawn his eyes had the dead, glassed-over look of a field hand who'd taken one too many beatings and was expecting another before the day was much older.

Nate took his row, but found he wasn't working as well as he ought to be. He kept glancing up to look across to where the white man labored. After so many years he hardly even felt the dew as it drenched his sleeves and began to soak through his overalls, but even though the morning was already mighty warm Mister Cullen kept being taken with fits of shivering that only seemed to grow worse as the sun climbed higher. He wasn't straightening up between plants, either, and once Nate caught him bent double and clutching at his knees as if trying to keep himself from toppling over. Dizzy, Nate thought.

He suspected he knew what was wrong now, and as they each drew near the end of their first row he grew more and more certain. The master was coming down with a bout of the tobacco sickness.

It happened sometimes to people who weren't used to the work: young ones or women or slaves just bought up from a cotton plantation. Nate himself had had his share of it in the early years. Nobody knew what caused it, for it wasn't like the sun sickness and it seemed to strike in cool weather as well as hot, but it happened most often when the tobacco was wet and a body had been in it for a few days. A person got jittery, with the shakes in his hands and sometimes inexplicable chills, and he felt all the time like he was going to faint. Most times he _did_ faint if he wasn't careful, and that could be the worst of all if the overseer was in a bad mood – not that the master had to worry about _that_. Then came the headache; a heavy pulsating headache that didn't go away with water or even sleep. And next…

Just about on cue, Mister Cullen abandoned the plant he had been working. He staggered to the end of the row and bent out over the grass. Clutching at his abdomen he began to retch.

Meg reached him first, hoisting up her skirts and running fleetly through the mud. By the time Nate drew near she had a bracing hand on his far shoulder and had taken his mangled straw hat with her other. She tossed it some distance away and pressed her stained palm to his brow in the same way she had when Lottie had come down with a misery in the stomach that winter. "There, now," she soothed. "Bring it all up. That's it. Bring it all up, Mist' Cullen, an' you'll feel better for it."

There didn't seem to be much left to bring up. Nate averted his eyes from the mess in the grass, trying not to think of his own breakfast which seemed quite well-represented therein. He looked at the master instead, canted to one side as he leaned into Meg's hold and heaved again with no result.

"Go get 'im some water," Meg ordered, her soft round face suddenly hardening into an uncanny image of Bethel's lean, stern one. Nate was just about to turn and obey when Elijah hurried off down the row, moving at a great pace for a man of his age. Meg shifted her hand, wiping back damp hair from a forehead now unmistakable grey-hued despite its tan. The gesture seemed to restore Mister Cullen to his senses, for he straightened a little and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Leggo, Meg," he said hoarsely, trying to shrug her off and flinching reflexively at the demand this placed on shoulders still stiff and aching from yesterday's work. Meg withdrew her arm, but only as far as his elbow. Nate couldn't blame her for that: the man looked likely to tip like a ninepin at any moment.

Nate closed the remaining distance. "You bes' sit down," he advised, nodding towards an overgrown hillock near the corner of the field. Mister Cullen moved his head as if to nod and then screwed his eyes tightly closed, obviously giddy. Nate took his left arm and together he and Meg led the stumbling man to the slope. He sat heavily, legs bent, and crossed his arms atop his knees before lowering his head gingerly onto them. His mud-caked work boots dug into the grass at mirrored outward angles, bracing him in place.

"Shit," he said in an unsteady voice thick with irritation. "I don't know what's got into me."

"I do," Nate said, looking down at him. "You sick. Comes of workin' the wet tobacco."

A derisive snort came from the burrow of sodden sleeves. "Nobody else is sick. We've all been out here together."

"Sure we have. This year an' last," said Nate, almost chuckling. "But the res' of us been doin' this a whole lot longer an' we've had our turns. You ever spent a whole week in wet tobacco before? You ain't used to it an' besides, you ain't made for it."

Elijah was back now, carrying the drinking bucket. He set it in the grass and drew up a dipperful. Slowly, as if the very motion was torture, Mister Cullen raised his head and reached for it. His hands were shaking so badly that he lost half the contents before he got the tin bowl to his lips. Then he filled his mouth, swished the water 'round, and spat it out feebly at his side. Elijah took the dipper, filled it again, and passed it back.

"Slow," he advised, and the younger man sipped.

He grimaced as he swallowed, but the heaving did not start up again. Gingerly he took a little more. Then he looked up from one concerned dark face to the next and he tried to scowl. "No sense everybody lollygagging around," he said. "I'll be all right in a minute: let's get this job done!"

They all shifted out of the engrained instinct to jump to his command, but then too they all hesitated, looking at one another. In the eyes of the others Nate read his own reluctance: none of them wanted to leave him here like this, not even to work just a few yards away.

"P'raps one of us oughta get you back t' the house," Meg ventured. "You shouldn' go on your own."

"Hang the house!" Mister Cullen exclaimed. The volume of his own voice seemed to pain him, for his mouth contorted in rueful discomfort and he said, far more quietly; "I'm not going back to the house. I'll sit here a minute and catch my breath, then I'll get back to work. Same as I want the rest of you to do, right now!"

He was nothing but a stubborn fool, but Nate did not offer this opinion. Even when they were boys, Mister Cullen had been as bullheaded as a mule with a torn fetlock. There was no use arguing with him when he set his jaw like that. "Meg, you set with 'im a while," he said. "Me 'n Elijah can pick for two."

"Meg, you get back to work, or we're goin' be out here all day," said Mister Cullen thickly. He dropped the dipper into the bucket and lowered his head back down onto his arms with almost excruciating slowness. "Ain't one of us wants to be out here all day."

Meg stood motionless for a moment, looking at him with distress in her eyes. Then she strode over to pick up his hat. "You put this back on, Mist' Cullen, an' you sit there 'til you starts feelin' well again," she said, planting the broad straw brim on the back of his bowed head. "You lookin' awful poorly."

She turned from Nate to Elijah and back. "Bes' do as Massa say," she told them. As she moved past Nate to resume her row she added under his breath; "He only get up an' do it hisself otherwise."

The two men followed her example, but even once he was back into the rhythm of working the plants Nate kept one wary eye on the bowed shape on the slope.

_*discidium*_

Cullen seemed to be subsisting in a haze of utter misery. His temples throbbed with the frantic staccato of his heart, and every beat sent a bolt of anguish burrowing through his skull and into his neck. He was at once unbearably cold and sweltering in the climbing sun. His arms were shaking and he could not keep his lips still, and worst of all the nausea seemed to be rising again.

After his miserable midnight awakening he had expected trouble, but this was beyond anything he could have imagined. There was a weakness in his body more pernicious than any fatigue born of hard work, and the truth was it frightened him. He felt as if he were dying – or at the very least as if he might be better off dead.

He had managed all right that morning, dragging himself out of bed with only a little more discomfort than was usual for the time of year. He had dressed himself without assistance, and had somehow contrived not only to bend to kiss Mary as she sat up in bed, drowsily asking after his health, but to straighten up again afterwards. Not all the way, of course, but in this season there were times when he wondered if his back would ever be straight again. Bethel had laid out his usual breakfast and he had choked back about half. Though this had earned him several suspicious looks and not a few demands after his missing appetite, he had forced down enough to appease her. It was all gone now, of course: festering in the long indiangrass.

His mouth was watering as it had through most of yesterday: pointlessly and without any prompting from an uneasy stomach. Cullen was wretchedly thirsty, but he did not quite feel up to the ordeal of lifting his tormented head or reaching for the dipper. Yet he had to get up sooner or later; there was work that needed doing, and no other hands to do it.

That Nate apparently knew what was wrong with him was a comfort. If it was just laboring in the tobacco that was making him ill he'd be all right. Negroes took sick in the fields all the time, at least on other plantations, and most often they just took care of their vomiting and got back to work. If they could do it, he could do it. Surely it wasn't any more serious than sunstroke, and he'd had a bout or two of that since he'd started working his own land.

Gingerly he raised his head a few inches. The muscles of his neck screamed their protest, but he ignored them. He'd never given in to the dreadful aches that came with this work, and he wasn't about to start now. He tightened his jaw and straightened a little more. His hat began to slip off of his head, and before he knew he was moving it his right hand flew to clamp down upon the crown. The impact sent a concussive wave through his skull. Screwing his eyes closed, he hissed softly behind clenched teeth. This was worse than any liquor-induced headache he had ever had, and it hadn't been nearly as much fun to catch.

With his hat settled in place and his head more or less level, he took another dipperful of water and sipped at it. His stomach churned and his throat closed briefly with an abortive choking sound, but he kept it down. Squinting against the bright morning sun he picked out the dark stooped figures among the livid green tobacco plants. The others were back at their work in earnest, and his determination to get back on his feet grew stronger. Slowly he got one knee under him and twisted to plant both hands in the grass. He paused thus for a moment, breath coming in hot and labored pants. Then he turned, rolling first onto his knees and then digging in with his right foot. His muddy boot slipped a little and he dug in with his toes. Exhausted muscles trembled and his head reeled, but the grade of the little hill worked in his favor and at last he was standing – though not very straight. The bag had slipped on his shoulder and he used his thumb to drag it back into place. Slowly and not without some disoriented weaving he made his way back to his row. Nate called out something to him, but Cullen waved a dismissive hand. They were going to get this job done, damn it, if it killed them all.

He found his place by the deep bootprint left when he had broken into a run, and set back to work. The plant had three new stems sprouting where the top had been lopped short, and he snapped them off one by one. The juice trickled down the side of his finger, and he watched it like a man in a trance. Coherent thought was a distant thing now, but eventually he remembered what he was supposed to be doing and he stooped lower to check the base of each leaf. He had long since given up on straightening his back between plants, but now even the effort of hoisting himself to their tops sent his head reeling. His nausea rose again and he clamped his lips, refusing to give it any quarter.

In this way he managed to make it to the end of the row, but he was not making very good time. As he shuffled down past his people he noted dimly how they kept glancing up as if they expected him to drop right where he stood. He was positively determined that this should not happen. A niggling voice within taunted him. They would never respect him again if he couldn't finish what he had set out to do.

He was feeling the heat again, but this was almost welcome after the bone-jarring chills. If only the sun were not quite so bright! The flesh around his eyes ached with the effort of perpetual squinting, and the light made his headache so many times worse. Fingers scrabbled and vertebrae creaked, and his boots ground deep into the dirt. His arms were leaden and his hands blazed with tingling, and his knees locked and his shoulders cramped, but he kept on with the blind obduracy of a man who was not about to let anything, not even his own body, dictate what he could and could not do. In this way he inched along down yet another row.

Then without warning the nausea struck again, deep and insistent this time. Cullen coughed, fighting to keep his energies focused on the sucker he was trying to pinch, but his stomach would not be ignored this time. A ripple tore through his abdomen and he retched dryly, then fought to swallow. This was a mistake, for the thin, persistent saliva that had been plaguing him since yesterday was enough to send his innards over the edge. Hastily he whirled, clutching at his belly and bending low as he vomited again. There was nothing to bring up now but a little sour-tasting bile, but his body did its best to be sure that it all came up. He had only just turned in time to avoid hitting the plant, but in the moment of misery and mortification he could not be thankful for that. The ground seemed to spin beneath him, and he stumbled forward, boot-heel splashing in his mess. He took two staggering steps and then fell to his knees in the dirt.

Faint and sick and bewildered, Cullen crouched there. His balance deserted him entirely for a long and terrible span of time, and when he came back to dim awareness he was bowed right over his knees, arms thrust out and locked and hands planted deep in the earth before him. He stared at them, their skin almost entirely obscured by tobacco juice and grime, and at the mire that welled up around them. Spastically his fingers closed into fists, choked with the mud; the thick, dark, viscous mud that dragged at his feet and clung to his soul and was slowly smothering his spirit. It squelched beneath his palms and the knees of his oilskins, soaking through the heavy cloth to weigh down the cotton of his drawers. It was hot and hideously smooth in his grasp, with only the faintest traces of grit to sink deep in his nail-beds and the webs of his fingers. He could smell it, loamy and sour and still faintly stinking of the winter's manure. He stared at it, oozing out from his clenching hands like the blood of some great mythical monster beyond his power to vanquish. And he felt nothing but a deep and blazing hatred for the mud, the heavy unfeeling Mississippi mud that had somehow imprisoned him.


	6. Back to the House

**Chapter Six: Back to the House**

Mary sat in her rocking chair on the porch, Gabe's drowsy weight against her at once comforting and smothering. It took the ache from her arms to hold him, but his little body was hot and she was already sweltering in the heat, although it was only the middle of the morning. She seemed to be recovering her strength at last, and she had ventured to get up while Cullen was downstairs with his breakfast. She had laced her stays loosely and donned the generously-cut frock that she had worn through the middle part of her pregnancy. It was roomy in the waist and comfortable on her healing body, but it was also an autumn dress and so a little too heavy to be worn in July. She had tried to compensate for this by limiting herself to two petticoats, but the day was so hot that she probably would have been uncomfortably stifling even running about the place in nothing but chemise and pantalets.

She had done a little housework today; sweeping the upstairs hall and tidying the nursery and dusting the mantel and bookshelf in the parlor. But the effort had proved tiring and Bethel had noticed it, and Mary had been sternly commanded to sit down and rest before she put herself right back in bed. Even if she had not seen the wisdom in this edict Mary would not likely have dared to argue, and so she had retreated to the little veranda with her son. She had brought out his copy of _Tanglewood Tales_ and had been reading quietly to him until the little boy, tired out from stalking Lottie around the dooryard, had drifted into a shallow sleep with his head on her breast. Tenderly she petted his downy hair, and drank in the sweet and quiet moment of motherhood.

Behind her the house was quiet. Bethel would be skimming the cream, and Lottie had gone down to check on the peaches. It was one of the little girl's favorite chores next to blackberry-picking, and Mary suspected that a good many of the fruits were eaten before they ever got back to the house. It was the sort of thing that many of the county matrons complained bitterly about, as if a child who couldn't resist a fresh-picked peach was some kind of nefarious thief. Such assertions always puzzled Mary, for it seemed the most natural thing in the world for someone to want to devour a sweet golden orb plucked fresh off the tree. Peaches were plentiful, and there was no harm in it.

Gabe stirred against her, and his hand crept up towards his mouth, thumb outstretched. Gently she curled her fingers around his wrist and stayed the motion, rocking the chair with one foot. She worried sometimes about raising a little boy in this heat. His energy always waned on the hottest days, and they were in the midst of a spate of very hot days indeed. She had taken to letting him go barefoot, for his little soft-soled brogans were getting too small. He was growing quickly and would be ready for a real pair of copper-toed boots that winter, if only the tobacco crop came in well and fetched a good price.

The thought of the tobacco stirred up her concerns about Cullen. He had assured her over and over again this morning that he was all right, just tired, and that he was well enough to go out. She had had no choice but to let him go when her gentle reasoning failed. It wasn't a wife's place to forbid her husband anything, particularly not the fulfilment of his responsibilities. Still she had half-hoped that Bethel would step in with an ultimatum. Slave though she was, she never suffered the slightest compunction about speaking her mind, and Cullen had a way of listening to her. But when Mary had come downstairs she had found her husband gone, and the black matriarch of the family shaking her head over the jar of saleratus as she started the breakfast biscuits.

Her lower back was beginning to ache, and Mary shifted in the chair. As she settled again she glanced out towards the rise and was alarmed to see two dark figures coming down from the direction of the tobacco fields. One was a little ahead of the other, weaving aimlessly and staggering. The rear figure marched along with a heavy step, but did not falter. As they drew nearer her heart rose into her throat. The lead man was Cullen, stumbling down the slope towards the house, and behind him walked Nate, his face set in determined lines and his arms ratcheted with tension as if they might be called upon at any moment to catch his faltering master.

The moment struck about a hundred yards from the stoop. Cullen stopped abruptly, swaying. His dull eyes seemed to pick out the house as if amidst a heavy fog, and his neck straightened with a little jerk. His left leg trembled, then locked, and his right knee gave way.

Quick as a panther, Nate swooped forward. He clapped one hand around Cullen's waist, and with the other hauled the white man's arm up and around the back of his neck. With his broad shoulders supporting much of Cullen's weight, Nate hurried on, neither quite leading nor quite dragging his master.

Hurriedly Mary shifted Gabe's body up onto her shoulder and stood, the rocking chair thumping behind her. She went to the edge of the veranda, but Nate caught her eye and she stopped. Cullen's head was lolling, damp hair straggling down to obscure her view of his face. His booted feet kept up a pretence of walking, but they kept crossing feebly at the ankles and it was clear that only the black man's support was keeping him upright. Recovering her senses, Mary turned towards the open door of the house.

"Bethel!" she called, her voice rising above the volume ordinarily considered acceptable for a lady. "Bethel, get out here at once!"

The men were at the base of the steps now, and Nate climbed onto the porch, hauling Cullen after him. The last vestiges of strength seemed to leave the lean legs and he sagged, but Nate dragged him to the bench that sat under the parlor window and contrived to prop him up against the side of the house.

"What happened?" Mary demanded anxiously, wanting to go to her husband's side but hampered by the sleeping boy. She looked about for a moment, helpless, and then set Gabe down on the rocking chair. Apparently oblivious to the commotion he merely curled up against its back and slept on.

"He took sick in the fiel', Missus," said Nate, now down on one knee. With one strong hand he kept Cullen pinned upright against the wall, and with the other he was undoing the large buttons down the leg of the oilskin overalls. "Puked up his breakfas' an'… beggin' you' pardon, Missus," he said, evidently ashamed of his indelicate language. "It the tobacco sickness. Comes of workin' wet an' for too many days."

"Are the others ill as well?" Mary asked. She bent to loosen the collar of her husband's work-shirt, and was appalled to find that he was soaked to the skin with sweat and dew. Last night he had said something about wet clothes, but she had not expected this. By the time he came home in the evening his garments were usually only damp. She pressed her hand to one clammy cheek, and Cullen's eyes fluttered open for a moment. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

"No," said Nate. "We's used to it. Been six wet nights an' six hot days: too much fo' a white man to take, 'specially if he not brung up to it. They ain't made fo' it."

She had the cuffs of the shirt unbuttoned now too, and she held one filthy hand so she could slap her husband's wrist. A rush of air and the clatter of shoes announced Bethel's arrival.

"Lor' have mercy, what he done to hisself this time?" she cried. Nate opened his mouth to explain, but Bethel was already giving orders. "Get them boots off firs', an' them oilskins," she said. "We get him up to bed, an' you can ride that uppity mare int' Meridian an' fetch th' doctor. Oh, I knew he weren't right when he didn' eat hardly nothin' this morning. That boy al'ys had the appetite of a bear, an' he didn' even touch his meat…"

She elbowed past Mary to take over the job of keeping the sagging man upright, and Nate turned his attention to the muddied work boots. Mary's frantic patting seemed to take effect at last, for Cullen raked his lids open again and this time his eyes locked with hers. He blinked once, dazed, and then he gave a tiny pained shake of the head.

"No doctor," he muttered.

Mary spread her palm across his brow, trying to contain her worry. "Darling, you took sick in the fields," she said, unsure what he might remember in the haze of his swoon. "We're just going to get you up to bed; everything will be all right."

"Here, Mist' Cullen, you get your arms up 'round my neck," Bethel said, flinging one lifeless limb over her shoulder and reaching for the other. "Hol' on now, much as you can."

With no concern for his filthy clothes against her clean apron, she wrapped both of the arms around his chest and hauled him up a few inches off the bench. Nate dragged on the overalls and as they began to come away Mary hurriedly reached for the waistband of her husband's drawers, which seemed stuck with tobacco sap to the outer garment and likely to come right off with it. It was an unladylike gesture, but she managed to preserve his dignity as Nate continued to pull. In a few swift moments the oilskins were in a heap on the veranda floor, and Bethel eased her master back down onto the bench.

"Good boy," she murmured. Her dark hand patted at Cullen's heaving breastbone. His eyes were rolling under slitted lids as he fought off a fresh fainting spell. "Tha' my good boy. All done now."

"How are we going to get him upstairs?" Mary asked. "I don't suppose we could carry him…"

"You ain' goin' carry nobody!" Bethel cried. "You jus' give youself a rupture an' start bleedin' fresh. Nate on one side, me on the other, we'll manage."

With a soft cooing sound, Gabe sat up. He slid his bottom down to the edge of the rocking chair, gripping the armrests with his small hands as he twisted to look for the source of the uproar that had roused him.

"Mama?" he said. "Bet'l?" Then his face lit up with an enormous smile and he slid down off the chair, which tilted perilously with him before falling back with a _whump _upon the rear bow of the rockers. "Pappy!"

Gabe came charging, almost stepping on Nate's lap as he hurried towards his father. He shimmied between the two broad skirts and took a fistful of the muddy fabric stretched over Cullen's left knee. "Pappy?" he repeated. His small sweet face crumpled as he saw his father's lolling head. "Pappy, wake up. Why you sleepin'? It's morning."

Cullen's eyes focused sluggishly, and his hand twitched towards the child. Then his wan face contorted into an expression of dismay. "Dammit, Mary," he said thickly. "Don't let 'im see me like this!"

Mary turned and gathered Gabe into her arms. Nate was dragging on Cullen's right boot now, and it came free with a loud squelching sound. He reached for the right.

"No, no!" Gabe cried, kicking his bare toes against Mary's thigh and trying to twist to reach for his father. "Pappy, I'll be good! I wanna get down! _Pappy!_"

Mary found herself grappling ineffectually with the squirming child, still unable to tear either her eyes or her focus from her husband. She jiggled her boy and tried to soothe him. "It's all right, lovey," she said. "Pappy's just a little sick. We need to be quiet and stay out of the way so that Nate and Bethel can get him up to bed."

Bethel nodded firmly at this, adjusting her hold on Cullen as Nate's grip on the left boot almost dragged him off the bench. The black man rose and took hold of Cullen's wrist as he drew the arm across his shoulders. Bethel did the same, her lean jaw set determinedly. She was nearly sixty, but she was strong and she was determined. With her help Nate managed to hoist the semiconscious master of the house off of the bench. Mary stepped back hastily, still trying to settle her son, and let them past her into the house. Cullen's feet dragged for the first few steps, and then he seemed to realize what was happening, for he made a feeble attempt to walk. His knees would not hold him, however, and he still hung heavily between the two slaves.

Mary followed them into the entryway, but kept back as they started up the stairs. Gabe was crying out for his father in tones that were becoming steadily shriller and more anxious, and Mary tried distractedly to hush him.

From the dining room came the slap of bare feet and a cheerful young voice. "Missus Bohannon? I got twenty good ripe ones, an' there'll be more in jus' a couple days. I never see'd such peaches. I…"

Lottie's voice trailed off as she came into the front hall and looked up at the three bowed figures struggling up the stairs. She had a basket over her arm, piled high with soft golden orbs, and her sun hat was in her hand. "Massa…" she breathed. Frightened eyes turned to Mary. "Wha' happened to Massa?"

"He took sick in the tobacco," Mary said. Her arms were aching with the effort of keeping a grip on her weeping son, and the pain in her back was starting up with a vengeance. "Oh, Lottie, will you watch him so I can get upstairs?"

For a moment the child seemed utterly stricken with astonishment and fear, but then her mouth closed and her dark eyes focused and she nodded. Swiftly she set down the basket of peaches on the chair by the door, and tossed her hat beneath it. She held out her arms and Mary disentangled Gabe from her own grasp, handing him off to the girl. Startled and now panicking, Gabe wailed, "_Mama_!" He tried to fling himself backward, but Lottie was fast and she was stronger than her wiry little body seemed to suggest. She got her arm around his shoulder blades and hugged him tightly to her, using the other hand to heft his bottom onto her hip.

"Now hush, Mist' Gabe honey," she said firmly. "You pappy's goin' have his naptime, an' Mama gots to tuck him in."

Gabe ogled at her, shocked out of his tears, and hiccoughed loudly. "Pappy don' take naps," he protested, his tone equal parts bewilderment and that particular superciliousness that only very young children possessed. _He_ knew his pappy didn't take naps, and Lottie wasn't going to convince him otherwise.

"Well, he goin' take one today," said Lottie, unperturbed. "Now you 'n me, we goin' have ourselves one of them peaches I picked. Missus? I kin give him a peach, can' I?"

"Yes, please, Lottie. Thank you," Mary said hastily. She would have agreed to the girl giving Gabe a coach and four, if it calmed him and pleased him and left her free to hurry after Cullen. "I'll be down as soon as I'm able."

"Oh, don' worry 'bout us, Missus." Lottie's chin jerked in a very adult gesture. Gabe had stopped fighting her, and had his chin on her shoulder as he looked at the basket of peaches behind her. She moved her hand from his back to pet his cloud of soft curls. "We's goin' have us a peach, 'n then maybe we go toss corn for the chickens."

Mary offered the best smile she could manage under the circumstances, and then seized up her skirts with a swoop of her left hand. Hoisting them higher than propriety usually allowed, she whipped around the newel-post and bolted up the stairs.

They were in the bedroom already, Cullen sitting slumped on the side of the bed. Nate was gripping his shoulders while Bethel had the china washbasin over his lap. With the other hand she held Cullen's head as he retched. She had eyes only for him, but as Mary entered Nate looked up with an almost imploring expression on his ordinarily implacable face. Hurriedly Mary closed the door so that Gabe would not hear. Then she rounded the bed. Cullen gave one last deep, sundering cough, and spit feebly into the thin puddle of water and acid in the bowl. Mary tugged her handkerchief out of her cuff and bent to wipe his mouth as Bethel took the dish away.

"There," she said. "That must feel better. Nate, please help me lie him down."

Nate cast a doubtful eye at the bed. "He goin' dirty them sheets," he warned.

"Never mind the sheets," said Mary. "Bethel, can you lift his feet, please?"

"I can lift my own feet," Cullen muttered, but he did not resist as Bethel seized his ankles and lifted. Nate shifted his body and a moment later Cullen was supine on the bed. Bethel peeled off his socks, and Mary started to unbutton his shirt. He was perspiring profusely but seemed a little more lucid than before.

"We'll get you some water," Mary told him; "and then you can sleep. Nate is going to go to fetch the doctor to have a look at you, and—"

"Uhh. No doctor," Cullen said. His voice was so slurred that he sounded intoxicated, but his eyes were bright and fiercely focused. "All I need's some rest and I'll bounce right back. Ain't that so, Nate? You took your turn, you said. Pappy ever fetch you a doctor?"

"Nawssir, he didn'," said Nate darkly. He caught a cold look from Bethel, who was filling the water glass and added in a deliberately offhand way; "But then I's only a nigger, an' I's built for such work."

There was an undertone to his words that Mary did not like, but Cullen's face twitched into a painful rictus that was something like a smile. He made the shallowest of throaty chuckles. "That's so," he said. "But you come out of it all right anyhow, didn' you?"

"Yes, Massa," said Nate. His tone was very flat now and he refused to look at either of the women. He kept his eyes intently on Cullen. "Two-three days res' an' you be jus' fine."

Cullen exhaled heavily and his head sank more deeply into the goose-down pillow. His sweat-soaked hair was already darkening the slipcover, and his face was a ghastly grey against the creamy muslin. "There, you see?" he said, shifting his gaze to Mary without moving his neck. "Two or three days and I'll be just fine."

Bethel snorted. "How Nate s'posed to know what wrong with you?" she said. "Could be you got the ague or sumthin', an' he wouldn' know. Nate nothin' but a young fool."

"It the tobacco sickness," Nate said. "Six days, six wet mornings, him not used to the work. Boun' to happen sooner or later." He ticked off symptoms with one calloused finger. "Pale, dizzy, headache, shiverin', pukin', faint dead away. Tobacco sickness."

Bethel had her arms crossed belligerently over her chest, and she was glowering at the black man. "You a fool," she said stoutly. "Now jus' you get on out of here an' back to your work. Leave the nursin' to folks as knows what they doin'."

Nate was cowed, but as he retreated he muttered discontentedly; "I thought you was sendin' me fo' the doctor."

"No doctor!" Cullen exclaimed. He flinched at the sound of his own voice and the drawn look about his face deepened. "Get on out back to that field. Nate," he said, making the obviously sickening effort to turn his head towards the door. "You know we got to get them plants finished today. They'll be ruined by Monday."

"Yassir," said Nate, and now there was nothing but grim agreement in his voice. "I know."

He bowed awkwardly at Mary and retreated from the room. For a moment there was silence, and Mary reached down to take her husband's hand. It was coated thickly with mud, now drying and coming off in crusted flakes that fell upon the counterpane. Slowly and excruciatingly he straightened his head again and tried to smile for her.

"I'll be all right," he promised. "Just this derned headache."

He was feeling well enough now to mind his language, at least: surely that was a good sign. Bethel rounded Mary and curled her arm under Cullen's neck. She tipped the water against his lips and he licked at it, then sucked in a small mouthful. Warily he swallowed, and then closed his eyes and sighed. "No doctor, Mary. I mean it," he mumbled.

She was easing his arm out of its shirtsleeve. "We'll see," she said. "If you get any worse, or you're no better tomorrow then I'm sending for him and you won't be able to stop me. Bethel, what about some soap and rags so we can wash his hands?"

"Yass'm," said Bethel. "I might fix some ginger-water, too. It don' sour in the stomach like well water do. I 'spects Nate be right: it sure do look like tobacco sickness. But we got to keep a watch out." She shook her head dolefully. "I tol' you this weren't no fit job for white folks, Mist' Cullen. I tol' you."

Bethel moved to the door, calico skirts whispering, and slipped out into the hall. Mary was working on her husband's other sleeve now, and her eyes were drawn to his face as he tried again to smile.

"To hear her talk, I'm only out there to make her crazy," he said, his voice hoarse and breathless.

"Hush," said Mary, making an effort to turn up the corners of her own mouth. "You've gone and given her a scare today. She's bound to scold."

"Don't know why I stand for it," he said. Locking his jaw, he braced his elbows and lifted himself off the mattress so that she could pull the soiled work shirt out from under them. When he fell back he lay panting quietly for a long minute.

The urgent energy born of fear was beginning to fade a little, and Mary felt wrung out and exhausted. Her back and her pelvis were aching, and the perspiration at the nape of her neck began to grow cold. She cast about for something useful to do, and saw the water glass. "Do you want more to drink?" she asked gently.

Cullen's head twitched, but he thought better of shaking it. "Prob'ly just come up again," he muttered, eyes closed.

The door opened and Bethel came back in bearing the pot of soap and an old towel. "Bes' let me get 'im clean an' out of them wet things, Missus Mary," she said. "Ain't no good you stayin' an' strainin' youself. You could see 'bout that ginger-water if you want to. Have Lottie bring it up col' from the well, an' you add one teaspoon sugar an' one pinch ginger an' mix it up. Make sure it col'."

Mary was reluctant to leave, but glancing at Cullen she could see the faintest flush of embarrassment on his pallid cheeks. If he didn't want her to witness these proceedings then she would spare his dignity. "I'll be back soon, dearest," she said, and bent to kiss one tar-smeared cheek. He made a quiet hum of assent, and she withdrew.

In the corridor she halted, her back to the door, and pressed her fingers deeply into the flesh of her abdomen just below the bottom of her corset. The pressure eased the grinding ache a little, and she composed her expression. Her mother would have been dismayed by her display in front of the servants, but Mary was far more concerned about how she would look to her son. Gabe had been badly frightened by the chaos on the veranda, and she did not want to upset him further. When she was certain her expression was serene – though surely her face was pale – she smoothed her hair with her palms and descended the stairs.

At the bottom she halted, for a moment startled to see a figure standing out in front of the house. Then her breathing eased and she moved towards the open front door. Nate was on the bottom step of the porch, banging Cullen's work-boots together so that the mud came flying off in sticky clods. Folding her hands neatly before him, Mary stepped out under the whitewashed roof.

"I wanted to thank you, Nate," she said, conscious that she sounded rather prim but not quite sure how to change that. "You've been very good today."

The Negro looked up, apparently unfazed by her quiet approach. "Only done what a good han' would, Missus," he said.

"All the same, thank you. You're going back out to join the others?"

"Goin' work that tobacco, yass'm. I jus' saw these here boots an' thought they bes' get a good beatin' fo' the damp spoil the leather." Nate bent to set them down on the top step. When he straightened he did so with the same stilted stiffness that Cullen always exhibited at this time of the year, and Mary was stricken with the sudden realization that he must be hurting too.

"Is there… is there anything I can do to help?" she asked, inexplicably uncertain. "The situation in the fields, I mean. You'll be a man short now."

"Yes, Missus, we be that," said Nate inscrutably. "It goin' take us longer, jus' three of us workin'. You wants to help, maybe you sen' Lottie down in a couple hours with fresh water an' somethin' to eat. We'll work on through, hopefully get done 'round two-three o'clock." He paused, frowning thoughtfully. "Massa ain't tol' us what he thinks we ought do then," he muttered.

"Oh." Mary sifted through the last half-dozen conversations she had had with her husband, but she could not recall him mentioning what else needed to be done around the plantation. He had been looking no further ahead than finishing this pass through the tobacco. "What would you suggest?" she asked.

Nate shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, refusing to meet her eye. "Ain't my place to say," he hedged.

Then she remembered that today was Saturday, and that generally Saturday afternoons were given to the slaves to rest, at least as much as the needs of the farm and the care of the stock allowed. Her discomfiture eased a little. "Well, once you've finished with the tobacco then your time is your own," she said with what she hoped was a suitably Southern dignity. "Please tell the others. I may need you to ride for the doctor if Mr. Bohannon takes a turn for the worse, but I hope it will not come to that."

"Yass'm," said Nate. "I hope it don'." He touched the brim of his battered hat and bowed to her. "I bes' get on back. Elijah 'n Meg mos' likely worried for the massa."

He strode off back towards the rise, and Mary watched him as he went. She was fond of the family Negroes, and full of fine feelings about abolition and equality, but the truth was she still did not really understand them. Still she felt she had done what Cullen would have wanted, and that bolstered her. She retreated into the house again, leaving the doors wide to catch the air.

Gabe and Lottie were gone from the dining room, and so she was spared the ordeal of putting on a brave face. From the kitchen she could hear them, laughing together out in the yard as the chickens sent up a chorus of eager clucking. Gabe let out a shrill, delighted shriek, and Lottie chuckled and said something to him. Relieved that her child was happy and cared-for, Mary searched the kitchen for the things she needed. She did not want to call for Lottie when she was doing such an important service with the little boy, and so she took the pail and went down to the well herself. The children were intent on the chickens and did not see her as she passed. Cullen kept the windlass well-greased and properly tightened, and it turned with ease despite the weight of water pouring from the bucket. Mary filled her own vessel about halfway with the cold water, and splashed a handful on her face. The droplets sparkled as they flew from her fingers, like a fistful of diamonds shining in the glorious summer sun.

_*discidium*_

Cullen did not want to wake up, but it seemed his body had other ideas. He surfaced on a rising tide of a hundred different aches – in his arms, in his hamstrings, in every fibre off muscle wrapping his back and ribs – but it was the pulsing in his head that was the most unbearable. He felt as though he had been thrown from a horse, and quite possibly then trampled by it, and he tried to remember with whom he had been drinking and why, whether he had lost any money on a bad wager, and what sort of a reprimand he was in for when his father found out.

Then it came back to him with a faint whiff of lilac sachet borne on the hot and unsteady breeze that was falling across his face and shoulders. He was no longer a wild and carefree youth charging about the county in the company of the other planters' high-spirited sons. He was a grown man and the master of the plantation now, with a wife and a child and responsibility for five other hungry mouths besides, and he had taken ill in the tobacco. Under the scent of his wife's pomander he found more unpleasant aromas: the sharp strong smell of the homemade soap they used for every day because store-bought bar soap was too dear, the sour reek of his own stale sweat, and the low and almost intangible stench of the Mississippi mud. He wrinkled his nose in distaste and parted his lips so that he might breathe through them instead.

The air upon his face fell still for a moment, and then gusted more quickly. A soft voice called out to him, his name a question saturated with equal parts love and worry. Warily, dreading the glare of sunlight that would send daggers of pain through his throbbing temples, Cullen cracked open his eyes. The lashes were stiff with salt, and they crackled as they fluttered, but the room in which he was lying was mercifully dim. Someone had drawn the muslin curtains to filter both the light and the heat of the day. His eyes wandered over the familiar ceiling, and then found the sweet, beloved oval of Mary's face. It took a tremendous effort to focus his gaze, but when he did he found her smiling. Or rather, her lips were smiling. Her eyes were clouded with sadness and something else. Something he earnestly hoped was not pity.

"Good morning," she said gently. She seemed to know that he needed her to keep her voice soft and low. She had her palmetto fan in one hand, and she was swishing it back and forth over him: this then was the source of the breeze in this still and muggy room. "Or good afternoon, I suppose. How are you feeling?"

He tried to speak, but his throat was closed and he managed only a croak. Grimacing thinly he tried to wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. He tasted perspiration, salty and faintly sweet, and the acid undertone of bile, and… ginger? He dimly remembered Bethel holding a glass to his lips and telling him to drink it all down, because he needed water and this wouldn't sour in his stomach. He had obeyed her unquestioningly, comforted by the capable black hands that had nursed him through his boyhood afflictions: everything from measles to the aftermath of his first encounter with good Scotch whiskey.

Mary's face looked pinched and pale, and the shadows beneath her eyes that had just begun to fade after her mysterious illness were dark again. Concern for her roused him to find his voice. "How long've I been sleeping?" he croaked.

"About four hours," she said. "Do you feel any better?"

It was an impossibly abstract question. Instead of trying to dredge up some sort of answer that would probably be more than half a lie, Cullen offered his own. "Did you send for the doctor after all?" he asked.

"No." Mary's brow furrowed. "You told me not to."

He closed his eyes, relishing the small release of tension from the muscles at their corners. "Good," he said. "Waste of two dollars." The wafting of the fan was stirring the fine border-hairs of his beard so that they tickled his cheeks. "Leave off with that thing awhile," he said crossly. "You ain't going to raise a wind on a July afternoon no matter how you try."

He opened his eyes again abruptly, afraid that he had hurt her with his words. To his enormous relief he saw that her smile had deepened now and there was a faint flush in her cheeks. "I know you must be feeling better," she said; "if you're well enough to grouse."

Cullen made a hoarse noise in his throat that under other circumstances would have come out as a chuckle. Good old Mary: she knew him, all right. "I guess I must be at that," he said. He hitched up his elbows and tried to push himself into a sitting position. He did not quite manage it, but immediately Mary was rearranging the pillows so that when he did fall back he was propped up at a comfortable angle. Riding a wave of swirling dizziness, he smiled for her. "There any water about, love? I'm thirsty."

From the table by the bed she took a glass and held it out. He curled a quaking hand around it, but she kept her own grasp too, and together they navigated it to his mouth. He drank cautiously, his stomach churning a low warning, and then let out a satisfied sigh. "Much better," he said.

Mary replaced the vessel on the table, and was just turning back with a question on her lips when there came a soft rapping at the door. "Come in," said Cullen, turning his head too quickly and sending it reeling again. By the time his vision had cleared Bethel was well into the room, a pair of napkins draped over one wrist and a little china sorbet bowl in each hand.

"Good: you awake," she said. She looked at Mary with an expression of exasperated commiseration. "He tell you how he feelin', or he jus' dance 'round the question?"

Mary smiled. "I think he's feeling a little better, Bethel."

"He sittin' up at least," said the older woman. Then she frowned. "You didn' hois' him, did you?"

"I hoisted myself," said Cullen in some irritation. They could at least stop talking as if he weren't even in the room.

"I only moved the cushions," Mary promised.

Bethel offered a terse nod of approval and came around to Cullen's side of the bed. She rounded Mary's chair and looked from master to mistress. "Jus' you try an' eat this, now," she said. "I'll bring you up some dinner direc'ly, Missus, but I think it bes' Mist' Cullen take it slow."

She handed one bowl to Mary and placed the other on Cullen's stomach, her hand lingering until he took reflexive hold of it. A light and sugary scent reached his nostrils and he tipped the dish. It was filled with diced watermelon from which the seeds had been carefully picked. His mouth began to water, but his face crumpled into a grimace. "Aw, Bethel," he groaned. His free hand gestured at the bowl and fell exasperatedly onto the coverlet. "You know I was saving this for tomorrow so everyone could have a bit of a Sunday treat."

"Well, they's havin' it now," Bethel said stoutly. "You think I'd waste a whole melon jus' so you could have a taste? I slice't the res' up, an' we all goin' have some. Them others is in from the field: got her all done. They deserves somethin' nice 'n cool, an' you needs somethin' in you that's like to stay down."

Cullen felt his tired shoulders relaxing a little as one worry ebbed. "They got her done?" he echoed reverently. He picked up the silver desert fork and studied it. It looked impossibly dainty in his work-roughened hand. "Well, that's a mercy."

"Hmph," grunted Bethel. For a moment she was silent, and then she added; "An' they get her done without you out there tryin' to kill youself. World go right on turnin' without you breakin' your back at the grindstone."

Not wanting to start up another quarrel in which he argued necessity and she railed about his health, his standing in the eyes of the slaves and the neighbors, and what she in general considered fitting for a gentleman, Cullen speared a piece of the luscious pink fruit. The fork trembled only a little as he raised it to his lips, and in the fragrant explosion of bliss he forgot about his miseries for a moment. The watermelon was crisp and cool from three days in the springhouse, and as he pressed the little cube against the roof of his mouth it burst in a flood of scrumptious juice. He sucked at it slowly, still wary of his unsettled innards, but when no nausea arose he swallowed and chased after another bright shard.

Mary was chewing hers thoughtfully. "Thank you, Bethel: it's a lovely treat," she said upon swallowing. She berthed her fork and reached to take the napkins. "Go and enjoy your share. And do please tell Lottie not to let Gabe swallow any of the pips."

"Oh, she know that already, Missus Mary," Bethel promised. She strode halfway to the door and turned to add, with an arch look at Cullen; "That chile gots more sense than a heap of grown folks."

Then she whirled and disappeared from the room, her steady footfalls sounding on the stairs. For a moment husband and wife sat motionless, staring after her. Then Cullen turned his head gingerly back to his bowl, chuckling softly. Mary let out a silvery giggle, and then the two of them were laughing like a pair of young lovers lately relieved of an over-strict chaperone. Cringing a little as his ribs, still sore from days of stooping, protested the exertion, Cullen did not notice that Mary too seemed to be laughing despite some unseen pain.


	7. Day of Rest

**Chapter Seven: Day of Rest**

Leaning into the corner between the wall and the footboard of Gabe's little bed, Cullen watched the slow rise and fall of his son's stomach as he slept. One hand cupped a small bare foot, and the calloused thumb traced a tender semicircle along the knob of the ankle. The darkened nursery was heavy with the immutable summer heat, but despite this and the stiff constriction of his Sunday clothes Cullen felt more comfortable in himself than he had all week.

Spending time with his boy always steadied him. When he couldn't remember quite why he kept on toting his responsibilities, the sight of the trusting child who relied upon the fruits of his labor set him right. When he found himself mired in frustration and impotent rage, a few joyful minutes with Gabe washed him clean again. Even his back, which after spending most of yesterday in bed was now a mass of tangled pains fissured with constant shallow spasms of agony, didn't hurt him half so much when his son was perched high on his shoulders, laughing delightedly. In summertime when there was so little leisure and Cullen's day of work began with the light and dragged on well past sundown, he didn't spend nearly enough time with his child. There were too many days when he didn't see Gabe at all. So on Sundays the two were virtually inseparable from the moment Mr. and Mrs. Bohannon got back from church to the moment when Gabe finally fell asleep for the day.

Today, of course, there had been no question of going to church. Even if Cullen had been up to it, Mary was only three days out of bed herself and still not lacing her corsets snugly enough to wear one of her good dresses. It pained Mary when she couldn't make her weekly outing; bred in the city, she sometimes suffered from a feeling of isolation on the quiet plantation. But though his conscience pricked him Cullen was glad of the respite. He didn't mind the service itself: they had a good Methodist preacher in Meridian, and the congregation knew its way around the hymnal. It was the hanging about afterward that he didn't care for, when half the neighborhood (the other half went to the Baptist church, which let out forty minutes later) turned out to gossip in the churchyard. He had always been out of place among the planters and their wives, even as a boy, and although his pedigree demanded that they continue to include him in their social circle they resented his disregard for their rigidly enforced niceties. It bordered on iconoclasm, and his choice of a Northern bride had not helped his standing in their eyes. Some of the men were willing to overlook his eccentricities out of respect for a straight-talking and straight-shooting neighbor who was always willing to help a fellow out of a bind, but the women were a different matter. They saw him as an unwelcome companion to their husbands and a dangerous influence on their sons, and the fact that most of the young belles of the county seemed half-taken with the poor but dashing Mr. Bohannon did not help his cause at all. There was always a great deal of whispering behind fans and gloved hands when he escorted Mary out of the church, and although he didn't much care what they said about him he didn't like exposing his wife to that kind of unfavourable scrutiny.

So it had been a welcome treat to stay at home this morning, moving gingerly about the house out of deference to his sore body and still-unsteady head. He had spent a highly amusing hour trying to teach Gabe to play draughts. The boy was really too young for the game, but that was the fun of it. He would grab one of his little red men and send it leaping willy-nilly around the board, sweeping up half of Cullen's pieces in one enthusiastic – and highly illegal – charge. Then he would whoop and clap and bounce up and down on his tucked-up knees and demand that they play again. After that he had wanted to wrestle, but Cullen had declined even without Mary's disapproving glance. They had settled instead for a raucously noisy but largely sedentary game involving a dishtowel and the turkey-feather fly swisher. Mary had watched all of this from her chair in the corner of the parlor with eyes that seemed by turns merry and unspeakably sad.

After the family finished a cold dinner that spared Bethel any excessive kitchen exertions on what was her day of rest as much as theirs, Cullen had brought Gabe upstairs to settle him for his afternoon nap. It had taken the little boy a long time to calm down enough to sleep, for he had missed his father during the week and he had endless eager stories to impart. There was one in particular about Pappy taking a nap with a peach that Cullen could not quite decipher, but he listened gravely all the same, making what he thought were appropriate responses and offering the child his complete attention. Cullen believed folks didn't spend enough time listening to their children, and he made a point of doing it whenever he could.

Now at last Gabe was dreaming, his eyes flicking to and fro beneath their lids while a lazy smile played on his round baby face. It was time for Cullen to bestir himself and head back down to the parlor. Sunday or not, he had some figuring to do, and without the happy distraction of his son the problem just wouldn't let him alone.

Still it was with reluctance that he finally shifted one leg and inched off the little feather tick. Gabe did not so much as pause in his rhythm of breathing when Cullen's first attempt to stand on cramped and unsteady legs sent him falling back heavily against the mattress. He gripped the bedpost and levered himself up with greater care the second time, and shuffled quietly to the door. Working the tobacco always left him feeling crippled up with aches, and yesterday's disaster had done nothing to change that. He tried to square his shoulders, but he could not quite manage it. Slipping into the upstairs hallway, he drew the door most of the way closed before descending to rejoin his wife.

Mary was working on her embroidery, sitting in the bright patch of sun admitted to the room through one tied-back curtain. She didn't have much time for fancy stitching during the week, when in the ordinary way of things she was busy with her child and the running of the house, the care of the garden, and the family mending that seemed to grow more and more voluminous as clothes began to wear out that could not be readily replaced. Knowing the pleasure she took in her bright silks and intricate samplers, Cullen regretted this almost more than anything else. If she had married some Yankee businessman she would have had all the leisure she wanted.

As he came into the room she looked up and smiled. There was such a determined air of serenity about her, but he could read her own weight of worries behind the smoky blue eyes and he wished all at once that he couldn't. "Finally got him to sleep," he said. "That boy of ours talks three times more 'n any politician I ever met, but he's at least twenty times more interesting."

"Did he tell you about Jeb chasing that frog?" asked Mary. "He's been saving that up since Thursday afternoon."

Cullen flinched inwardly at that, but he was on the far side of the parlor now and was able to avoid any response by taking out his small ring of keys. He took his time in looking them over each in turn, though he could have found the one he wanted in a moment. He only had half a dozen keys, and most of them didn't see much use. There was the key to the front door, a big iron thing that weighed down his pocket; the keys to the springhouse and the smokehouse; the key to the strongbox in the crawlspace where he kept his store of ammunition for the rifle and the shotguns. He had a key to Mary's jewel-box, which he never used, and he had a key to his grandfather's desk.

The desk was a colossal old secretary, and family lore had it that Duncan Bohannon had hauled the thing with him through five states on his pilgrimage to settle in the Mississippi Territory. What might have possessed the man Cullen could not imagine, and it was one question that he had never dared to ask his redoubtable grandfather, who had died when he was nine. Whatever the case, the desk had occupied pride of place in this room since the house was built, and Cullen's father had transacted almost all plantation business seated in the elegantly carved Empire chair before it. Cullen himself seldom used it, not only because he had precious little time for sitting around at a desk, but because the stolid formality of the mahogany façade with its inlaid drawers and its intricately cast handles had always made him feel profoundly uncomfortable and not a little ridiculous. Its function now was primarily one of storage, housing not only the trappings of literacy but also nails and carpet tacks, scissors, twine, wallpaper paste, Mary's collection of odd buttons, and the small cache of tobacco that Cullen kept back every year for his personal use. Nevertheless it was the only writing surface in the parlor, and it was rude to leave a lady alone to scribble at the dining room table.

He unlocked the fall front and drew out the props to support the writing board. Behind it were pigeonholes stuffed with a clutter of old correspondence, railroad bills of lading, and draft sketches done on scraps of paper. There was also a drawer, secure unlike those in the cabinetry above, in which Cullen kept what little money he had beyond the fifteen dollars propping open his credit at Madsen's Bank in Meridian. His finger crooked under the drawer pull for a moment, pensively, and then he sighed softly. He rummaged through the yellowing leaves of rubbish until he found an aged letter with a blank back. He smoothed it out on the drop-leaf and uncorked the inkwell. In his exhaustion on Thursday night he had forgotten to clean the nib of his pen before putting it away, and it was choked with dark flakes. He wiped off what he could with the corner of the paper, and then sucked off the rest. It had a bitter taste and it stained his lower lip, but he did not care. He dipped his pen and began to write.

Once he started the thoughts came more quickly than his fingers could lay them out. A column of sums appeared, almost of its own accord. He scratched succinct notes in the margin, thinking through the pen instead of out loud. The necessity of returning time and again to the inkwell interrupted his writing but not the flow of his reasoning. From the figures he turned seamlessly to a list of the dozens of chores, great and small, that had to be accomplished in a day, in a week, in the months between now and the end of the tobacco harvest. He didn't understand them all or why many of them had to be done, and he certainly couldn't perform most of them with much skill, but he had a quick mind and a flawless memory and by the time he had filled the last inch of useable paper he knew he had laid out everything.

He put down the pen and flexed his fingers. They had worked just as hard as any other part of him this week, and they were aching in protest of this additional effort. With his left hand he lifted the paper, its ink still gleaming and damp, and he exhaled heavily. He had four months' work summarized neatly on the page, but in reality that labor stretched out like an unending road before him – a road of drudgery and worries and uncertain rewards.

"Today's a day of rest, Cullen," Mary said gently. "Let that be."

"You don't even know what I'm working on," he said, setting down the sheet and rubbing thumb and forefinger together so that a smudge of ink spread between them.

"I know it's plantation business, and you should leave it. What do you _want_ to be doing today?" She buried the end of a strand of blue silk, and set the embroidery frame in her lap so that she could thread her needle afresh.

Cullen grinned at her, shoving aside his worries for a moment. "You got the most modern notions about Sundays," he said. "Shouldn't I be reading my Bible or preaching to the darkies?"

"My father said that if a man worked the whole week long, he earned the right to do as he pleased one day out of seven," said Mary. "Providing he wasn't drinking or blaspheming, of course."

"Of course," said Cullen solemnly. Whatever his feelings about the rest of his wife's family, he had always got on well with his father-in-law. Leonidas Tate was a sensible man, and he hadn't even looked surprised, let alone horrified, when Cullen had asked him for Mary's hand.

"Well, then, you've worked your six days. What do you want to do?"

Cullen spared her the argument that he had not worked all of yesterday. The shame of that still stung, though he still didn't know what he might have done to prevent it. "I meant to take Bonnie out for a gallop," he said. "Poor girl's getting restless shut up in the paddock all week." He sighed and scratched at his brow. "Fine lot of good it'd do us if I came over giddy while she was at speed and broke my leg."

Mary's placid expression faltered. "Are you still giddy, then?" she asked anxiously.

"Not so long as I stand up nice and slow," said Cullen. He shrugged ruefully, sending up a jolt of pain through his neck. "Don't know what I'll be good for on Monday."

"I thought you were going into Meridian to get the mail tomorrow," said Mary. "Surely in the buggy you wouldn't have to worry about getting dizzy, providing you kept a sensible pace. Or I could come with you, just in case."

He had forgotten all about his intention to go into town. It seemed as if he had forgotten most things in the single-minded drive to finish this latest pass through the tobacco. He had to stop doing that. A farmer - or planter - couldn't take the short view, not even for a little while: he had to look months ahead, planning and figuring and fretting. It wore a man out.

"You want to go into town?" he asked. "You're only just out of bed."

"Not particularly," said Mary; "but I will if you need me. Or if you want me," she amended. She added softly; "It's been four weeks since you've gone for the mail, and I know there are other things we need."

Her words pricked at him. Until that moment he had been convinced she was only suggesting the excursion to keep him away from the farm work for a half-day or more, but now he wondered. Four weeks between mail runs meant four weeks since she'd had a letter from home.

"I can go on my own," he said. "It'll do the horses good to get off the place for a while, even if they are pulling a buggy. What-all do we need?"

"I'll speak to Bethel and write up a list," Mary promised. "Now close up that desk and try to enjoy your Sunday."

Cullen did close the desk, locking it carefully and stowing his keys, but he took his sheet of scrawlings with him. Mindful of his sore head, he stood up slowly. "I think I'll take a little walk down to the cabins," he said. "See how everyone's getting along."

Mary gave him a long look, but said nothing to dissuade him. She took another tiny stitch and studied her sampler to consider the next one.

Cullen went out through the kitchen, moving quietly past Bethel where she drowsed in her chair beside the stove. The afternoon was hot and bright; the air heavy and the sky clear. It was a mercy it was Sunday, for this was no weather to be working in. That it was just the same weather in which they had all been working for days did not even cross his mind.

The dooryard was quiet; Jeb was sleeping in the shade of the chicken coop, and in the paddock behind the barn Pike and Bonnie were grazing contentedly. The four mules were also out, standing off to one side as if they realized they were the social and natural inferiors of the horses and feared to encroach upon their space. Cullen took the shortcut through the willows, emerging from their shade just behind Meg's cabin. It was shut up, for Meg would be over at Hartwood visiting her Peter, and Lottie was probably down at the creek. Meg didn't take her onto Sutcliffe's land anymore, and hadn't in over a year.

He found Nate sitting in the doorway of his cabin, puffing on his old clay pipe and whittling something shapeless. Seeing him, the black man shifted as though to stand. Cullen held out a staying hand. "I'm not here to intrude on your rest," he said. "Where's Elijah?"

"Lyin' down out the sun," said Nate. He shifted the pipe in his teeth and let a long stream of smoke out of his nostrils. "Guess it _his_ res' you be fixin' to intrude on."

He kept his tone neutral, but it was the sort of statement that smacked of subversion. Cullen's eyes narrowed, but he could see nothing in the impassive dark face to indicate what his old friend was thinking. "I need his help," he said. "His expertise."

Nate scowled. He didn't like it when Cullen used words that showed his education, and Cullen tried not to do it. But today he was still suffering under the weight of that intractable headache and he had forgotten. "What that?" the black man grunted.

"His knowledge," said Cullen. He opened his mouth again and thought better of it. Using the master's prerogative, he simply walked past to Elijah's cabin.

The door was agape, and the one room dark. Cullen stepped over the threshold and out of Nate's intense line of sight, standing for a minute while his eyes adjusted. Elijah was lying sprawled out on his bunk, naked to the waist. His ropey old chest moved with breath that was too quick for slumber, but his eyes were closed and one arm flung up across his brow.

Cullen rapped lightly on the small table under the window. It rocked with the motion and he made a note to have a look at it later. Elijah stirred. "I tol' you I aimed to get some rest," he said sourly. "Get on outta here an' keep youself busy."

"All right," said Cullen. "When can I come back?"

The old man stiffened and got hastily up onto one elbow. "Massa!" he exclaimed. "I didn' know it were you. What you want from this ol' hand on a Sunday?"

Cullen glanced back at the open doorway, but decided to leave it alone. If Nate wanted to eavesdrop no door would stop him. The cabin walls were adequate for the mild Mississippi winters, but they didn't muffle much sound. "I need some advice," he said. "Don't get up."

He stooped, feeling the motion in every bone of his spine, and hooked his fingers around the stool tucked under the table. He dragged it over to the bunk and sat, shaking out the paper he held with a flick of his wrist. "It's about the tobacco."

"I see." Elijah shifted so that he was leaning against the weathered wall, one knee drawn up. "Thinkin' mebbe we oughta let a few rows go after all?"

"We can't afford to let a few rows go," said Cullen. "If we make a decent quality crop I'll still have trouble meeting expenses, and if it's anything like last year…"

"Las' year was a bad one," Elijah agreed with a regretful nod of the head. "Too dry. Tobacco need the rain more 'n cotton do. Tha's why mos' folks 'round here don' grow it."

"Look," said Cullen; "Nate said I took sick yesterday from too many days working in the wet. Bethel seems to think he's right. You agree?"

Elijah shrugged. "It part of this job," he said. "We all take a turn now 'n then. Meg have a headache las' night too, on'y she used to the work so it don' go so far."

Cullen frowned. No one had said anything to him about Meg suffering a headache. "Well, that's what I mean," he said wearily. "What can we do to stop that from happening?"

"Ain't a thing we can do," said Elijah. "'Cepting keep out the tobacco when it wet, an' not spend five full days straight in it. Never was a nigger solved that problem yet."

"What do they do on other plantations?" Cullen pressed. "What about in the Carolinas, where it's wetter? Their folks must run into this all the time."

"Sure," said Elijah, shrugging. "But they's jus' slaves. They take sick, they jus' pick up 'n get back to work. Lotsa places the overseers beats 'em if they don'. Not many white folks careful of their people like you, Mist' Cullen."

The words of approval were lost in a fit of humiliation. People came down with this affliction all the time, so Elijah said, and they just picked up and got back to work. They didn't let themselves be chased back to the house to languish all afternoon on a feather bed in a shady room. Again Cullen wondered whether he'd ever be able to get his people to respect him again after such a show of weakness.

"What about this," he said. "The worst of the dew's gone by the time we've had our dinner break, wouldn't you say?"

"Yassir," said Elijah. "That about right. But ain't no good wastin' a whole mornin' letting her stand. Never get her done at that rate."

"Right," said Cullen, squinting in the gloom to decipher his numbers. "But we usually spend four and a half, maybe five days suckering at a time. That's four and a half, maybe five days dawn 'til suppertime. Five and a half this week, and one day 'til nightfall, but that was a bad one."

"Yassir, Mist' Cullen. Bad one," the old man agreed with a queer lilt to his voice.

"Day's fourteen hours long in July, so that's between fifty-four and sixty hours on average every other week. This week you three put in just about seventy." This was a guess: he wasn't certain quite what time they had finished yesterday.

"You was right out there with us," Elijah said quietly, peering pensively at Cullen's face. "Right up 'til you couldn' hardly stand."

"Never mind that," Cullen said brusquely, anxious to put the whole thing behind him. Nate at least seemed willing to do that: if only he could get the older folks to do the same. "Say it does take seventy hours every other week to get through those fields. Couldn't we do the same work in half-days if we didn't take the week away? Starting after dinner and working through 'til supper; sunset if we had to?"

Elijah frowned, the skin about his eyes crinkling and his lined brow furrowing in thought. "Ye—es…" he said slowly. "I reckon we could."

"By then the tobacco wouldn't be so wet; our clothes wouldn't get soaked; we'd have a better chance of keeping healthy." Cullen was speaking very quickly now, carried away with the rapidly brewing idea. "Instead of trying to get it all done at once, we could just put it in steadily, and if we could do a full pass every two weeks the suckers wouldn't be left any longer than they already are."

"What 'bout the other work?" asked Elijah. "Plantation don' jus' run itself. Yams want tendin', an' the corn goin' be ready in a few weeks. Wagon need mendin', that new fence still on'y half done, somebody got to help get in the beans, they's shingles come loose on the end dormer, an' the hay—"

"We can tend to those things in the mornings," said Cullen eagerly. He had found a solution; he knew it. The jubilation of that was enough even to blunt the effect of hearing this litany of heavy labor recited aloud.

Elijah's lips thinned. "Never been done that way," he said. "Week in the tobacco, week out: you' pappy al'ys done it like that."

"I'm not my pappy," Cullen pointed out. "And we don't have thirty field hands to do the work anymore, nor four hundred acres in tobacco. We've got fifty, and it's killing us. Something has to be done different. Forget 'bout how it always been done: could it work my way?"

Elijah seemed to consider this for a long while, mouth moving silently as he studied his fingertips. Finally he sighed. "Reckon it could," he said. "But you got to know, Mist' Cullen, that mean we got to be out there ev'ry day, ev'ry single day, pullin' them suckers. We lose a day, we spoil them rows."

The excitement of having found the answer to his dilemma suddenly vanished, like a campfire doused in a bucketful of freezing water. Cullen felt his shoulders sag, and he rounded over his lap, bracing his arms on lean thighs and running his hands through his hair. The weight of reality came crashing back upon him, and the long months until the end of harvest stretched out like a prison sentence.

"Every day," he said bleakly, as if speaking the words aloud would somehow lighten their burden. The thought of stooping and scraping and scrabbling every damned day for three miserable months filled him with a weariness he could not quite countenance.

"Yassir," said Elijah soberly. "'Cept Sundays, of course."

_*discidium*_

Mary listened as Cullen explained what he intended to do. There was none of the animation in his voice that she had long ago learned to expect when he was striking his own course in defiance of long practice or convention. He spoke quietly and methodically, running through calculations she did not quite follow apparently based on numbers he had pulled from his head and kept to himself. The one thing that was very clear was that someone – Nate, most likely – had told him of Meg's headache and that he was more deeply troubled by this than by his own illness. When he came to the end of his plan he set down his fork and looked across at her expectantly.

"Well?" he said. "What do you think?"

"It seems sensible," she said; "only it does mean you'll be doing all the tobacco work at the hottest part of the day."

"We'll drink plenty of water," said Cullen. "But working wet is the most miserable part of it, and if I'd know it could make us sick I'd never have stood for it. Now I know I got to do something, don't you see?"

"I do see," said Mary. "I just wish there was a way you could do something and keep yourself out of it at the same time. You're not used to the work, Cullen, and it's taking its toll on you."

"Only way to _get_ used to the work is to do it," he said. "I'll manage. We need four people out there: can't do it any other way."

"What about taking on hired help?" asked Mary. "You could engage a couple of free Negroes, or a boy from one of the small farms."

"There ain't a free Negro in Lauderdale County," said Cullen; "and small farmers need their sons out there like I need Nate and Meg."

"A trapper, then, or one of the woodsmen…" she tried, groping for ideas and finding none at all.

"With what money, Mary?" He looked her straight in the eye, fork frozen halfway to his mouth. "I may not be much of a farmer, but I'm the equal of any woodsman at the job. And I work for nothing."

He was talking about wages, of course, but there was a strange note to the word _nothing_ that unsettled her. She looked down at her plate to escape his steely gaze. "It isn't right," she said. "White people aren't built to work in the tobacco: Nate said so yesterday. Twice."

"Well, Nate's wrong," said Cullen. "A man's built for what he's got to do in life." There was a curious pause, and Mary looked up to find him studying her thoughtfully. "What kind of a thing is that to say, anyway?" he asked. "You're the one always telling me the slaves should be set free."

Mary flushed. "I only meant… that is… it's this heat," she said. "Working in this _heat_. The darkies come from Africa: surely it must be just as hot there as it is in Mississippi, but you're Scotch, and…"

"I'm Mississippian," Cullen said. His voice was still mild, but his eyes were hard. "Born and raised right here, same as Nate. I growed up in this heat, and I can take it. Hang it, Mary, if even you don't believe I can do it what hope have I got of convincing the others? Elijah and Bethel been looking at me like I'm broke, and I never can tell what Nate's thinking. Meg… well, I think she'll look up to me no matter what because of Lottie, but—"

"What do you mean, because of Lottie?" asked Mary. "Because you wouldn't put her out in the fields?"

"Partly, yes. And… there's other things…" A shadow of anger passed across Cullen's face, and he took a wrathful forkful of his sweet potatoes. He seemed to be recovering his appetite, which was tremendously comforting. "But I can't run the place if they won't listen to me, and slaves don't listen properly to men they don't respect."

"They respect you," said Mary quietly. She believed it was true. She hoped it was true. But she didn't understand the full spectrum of the relationship between her husband and the people he owned – Bethel, who was almost a mother to him; Elijah, who had known him from babyhood; Nate, who had been his playmate; sweet, well-meaning Meg, whose love for her daughter encompassed all those who were kind to the child; and Lottie, who was as attentive as a sister to Gabe. It was such an intricate web of ties both intimate and impersonal, tangled throughout with the murky question of property and whether it was even possible under God for one man to own another. However long she lived here, Mary thought she would never fully understand it.

Cullen was cutting his ham now, holding the knife delicately in hands liberally stained where the tobacco sap had soaked into the skin. "Best hope you're right," he said darkly as he raised the fork to his lips.


	8. Meridian

_Note: History and canon are somewhat at variance. I've done my best to compromise._

**Chapter Eight: Meridian**

Morning was still young when Cullen hitched Pike and Bonnie to the jaunty little buggy. The horses were eager, and nickered happily as he snugged up the traces and settled the bits between their teeth. Bonnie was pawing at the ground, and she tossed her head when Cullen buckled the driving reins and flung them over the rail. Pike, far more patient, contented himself with a deep-throated whinny. Cullen stroked each velvet nose in turn and murmured soothing nonsense under his breath.

He had arisen as usual to help with the morning chores, and had settled the order of the day's labors with Nate and Elijah. The sweet potatoes were large enough now that they were in need of hilling before their spreading vines made the work impossible. That was the chief concern of the day. It was a grubby undertaking, but nothing to the misery of tending the tobacco. And when it was done the yams could be left to grow more or less unchecked, unless the summer proved unseasonably dry. Cullen's mind shrank from that thought. A dry summer meant hard work watering the yams and the garden, but it would be disastrous for the feed-corn and the all-important cash crop.

By Elijah's estimation and according to the previous growth pattern, they had a week yet before they would have to attack the tobacco in earnest, and Cullen hoped they could make considerable inroads in the other work about the plantation before then. The yams were in the most urgent need of attention, but the green beans were starting to ripen more quickly than Lottie could pick them, and some extra pairs of hands there would not be amiss. Soon the corn would need hoeing again, too, though the stalks were growing well and would soon shade out the worst of the weeds. If all went well they could start that on Wednesday. Then there were the hosts of small repairs to the outbuildings and farm implements that were waiting on Cullen, the most pressing of which was the broken axle on the wagon. They were down to their last cord of stove wood, and more had to be cut soon so that it would be dry enough to burn cleanly when needed. Even as recently as the previous August Cullen had bought fuel from the back-country woodsmen, but this year he was trying to spare every expense he possibly could. So trees had to be felled in the creek bottom or along the west property line, and hauled back to the heart of the plantation: for that they needed the wagon.

This morning, however, he had other business to attend to: tasks that only the master of the house could perform. With his good felt hat on his head and Mary's list tucked into his pocket, Cullen was going into town.

He had changed out of his work clothes before indulging in the rare treat of breaking his fast with his wife and child, and was now clad in the best of his day wardrobe. The neat black trousers with their somber grey stripe were set off by the dark watered silk waistcoat that he had worn to his wedding. His frock coat was also black: light summer wool that Mary had brushed meticulously for him. He wore a fine Holland shirt, the left cuff of which had been so carefully mended that the new stitches could not be distinguished from the old, and a blue silk cravat that had been a gift from his wife two Christmases past. His riding boots, now rarely worn, were polished to a sheen. They were two years past their prime, but well-tended and sturdy. In the pocket of his coat sat the last accoutrement of a country gentleman: his black kidskin gloves. He seldom wore them, but had brought them today because his hands were badly stained with tobacco juice and thick with callouses. If he happened upon certain acquaintances, Mary had reasoned as she tucked them into his pocket, he might wish to cover them up.

He knew that he cut a fine figure, but Cullen felt like a fool. By now news of his fallen fortunes had surely spread to the far corners of the county: Sutcliffe would have taken great glee in seeing to that. Suiting himself up like a dandy just to hear the news, collect the mail, and pick up a few necessities would not change that. But dressing up to go into town was one of those things that respectable people did, and for the sake of his family he had to cling to the veneer of respectability. It was impossible to transact advantageous business with the planters if they did not see you as one of their own, and Cullen felt certain that he was going to have to do a good deal of business with the neighbors this year.

He clicked his tongue and flicked the reins, and the Morgans were off. They were an elegant and high-stepping team, and if he wanted to sell them he could easily raise twice what he had paid for what had then been a three- and a four-year-old with basic carriage training, their worth chiefly in their pedigree and their potential. He had no intention of selling his horses, but if worst came to worst he could perhaps raise a loan on them. That was a risk, but it was preferable to mortgaging his land or his slaves.

Resolutely Cullen tried to shut his mind against his worries and to enjoy his drive. The sun was climbing now, glinting off the dew in the long grass. He came to the edge of his drive and without any prompting Pike and Bonnie turned out onto the mossy lane that wound down to the main road. Here there lingered still some memory of the wild country out of which his grandfather had carved a thousand acres of arable land: pines and willows and still, shady places where once the Choctaw Indians had hunted. The Indians were gone now, and the settlers who had replaced them had sired a generation of prosperous landowners who in turn had fathered indolent and entitled sons. These too had sons; the boys with whom Gabe would one day attend school. It was settled country now, but the wildness had not quite gone out of the land or the people. It was just that in Cullen's case it ran a little nearer to the surface than was considered perfectly genteel.

When they reached the main road, packed hard by the traffic from neighboring plantations, he slackened the reins and let the horses canter. They did so joyously, happy to be out in the open at last. The buggy was light and not much of an encumbrance, particularly with Cullen alone on the box. There was room for a second person on the board beside him, and behind the cushioned leather seat in the shelter of the folding cover would accommodate two more. Seldom did the vehicle hold more than two, for Cullen preferred to drive his own team whenever he could. The one exception was when he and Mary went to some do at one of the nearby plantations: a supper or a ball or a picnic. Then Nate would drive, and if the occasion called for a ladies' maid Bethel would ride along beside him. But such invitations were rare, and even when they went to church Cullen usually took the reins.

The road made a deep southwesterly sweep, passing by the cleared land at the edge of the Ainsley plantation. Beyond the stretch of pasture Cullen could see the first rolling rise of the cotton-fields, dotted with dark shapes moving between the rows: slaves tending to the half-grown plants. Among them passed a rider with the unmistakable bent of an overseer. The sun was bright here on the cleared stretch of road, and the horses' sleek backs seemed to shimmer. Bonnie was tugging on her bit, urging her master to give her a little more rein. He obliged and she quickened her pace, driving Pike to follow. They were almost at a gallop now, and the buggy rattled and jounced. Cullen wished he were astride one of them – either of them – rising and falling with the rhythm of their gait with his hat cast away and the wind in his hair. But he had to bring back goods from town, and so he needed the buggy.

He let them run for a while, and then slowed them to a trot. Too long at speed in this heat would do them no favors, and he did not want to risk either horse coming down with a bout of colic. Still the remainder of the six miles swept swiftly by, and soon he was turning out onto yet another, larger road that wound down a series of swells to the edge of town.

Meridian had only just been made a town, but as long as Cullen could remember there had been the roots of a community here. When he was a boy it hadn't been much more than a stretch of fresh-laid railroad with a general store and a couple of small clapboard houses. With the construction of the Mobile-Ohio spur line and the erection of a station house where it met its rival, Southern Railway, the village had grown in a rangy and disarrayed fashion around the junction. There had been a hearty quarrel a few years back over the name of the place, but to Cullen it had always been under that name that it had finally been granted its township status earlier this year, much to the excitement of the county denizens.

He slowed his horses to a walk, passing through the straggle of tents and shanties belonging to the newcomers who always seemed to follow the railroad. These were soon supplanted by neatly whitewashed houses in the old Colonial style, wherein the more established residents dwelt. There were vacant lots, either unsold or waiting for building to begin, but these were sparser now than they had been even a couple of years ago. Then the buggy bounced over a small rise and he turned onto the main street that ran down to the stationhouse that had given the town its name. This was the heart of the business district, and most of Cullen's stops lay along this road.

He drew up the buggy in front of the dry goods store and climbed down. He settled the feed bags for Pike and Bonnie, and looped the reins around the hitching-post. Then he took off his hat, smoothing his hair with one hand as he looked down the street. The midmorning train had not yet arrived and the town about him still had a drowsy air to it. Replacing his hat, he started down the street towards the station. He had no business there, precisely, but the postmaster worked out of the telegraph office, and that was right near the tracks. He glanced back at his horses as he passed the bank, but they were busy with their oats and apparently oblivious to his absence. There were some places, even in this state, where a man couldn't leave a good team unattended, but here they were safe enough. Not only was Meridian a quiet sort of town despite its railroad traffic, but the Morgans were known throughout the county and any stranger driving them would be stopped and questioned.

Cullen stepped into the shadowy front room of the telegraph office, not quite able to resist peering out its broad glass window at the railway his grandpappy had helped to build. From the back room came the low clacking of the telegraph machine, and behind a long counter sat the postmaster. He was perched on a stool before his wall of pigeonholes, thick spectacles perched on his nose as he pored over a newspaper bearing the banner _Scientific American. _Cullen strolled up to lean against the counter, waiting to be noticed. When a full minute had passed he cleared his throat.

"Morning, Mr. Boam," he said. "You think I could get my mail, or should I come back some other day?"

The postmaster looked up, somewhat startled, and then folded the paper with extravagant care and stowed it in one of the mail compartments. "Well good day to you, Mr. Bohannon," he drawled, hopping off his stool and scuttling like a cricket to the counter. He offered one thin hand, and Cullen shook it cordially. "It's been a while since you've been in. I was beginning to think you'd forgot about us."

"Just busy on the plantation," said Cullen. He nodded towards the postal nooks, many of which were just as thickly stuffed as his own. "What do you have for me?"

Boam reached and brought down a sheaf of mail. It appeared to be chiefly copies of the semi-weekly _Mississippian_ out of Jackson, but there were at least two envelopes and one thick paper that had been folded in on itself and sealed with a blob of red wax. The sight of the newspapers irritated Cullen. Meridian did not have its own newspaper, and so those who had an interest in the world beyond what county gossip could satisfy had to get them by mail. The paper cost one and a half cents an issue, with another penny for postage, and as much as he might miss the diversion Cullen simply could not spare a half-dime a week. He had written no less than three times to cancel his subscription, but they just kept sending them in the hope that one day he'd lose patience or resolve and pay to take them.

"Give me them letters," he said, holding out his hand. He restrained the urge to drum impatiently on the counter as Boam picked each one up and studied it.

"We got three here from New York, postage paid," he said ponderously, picking out another envelope from under one of the newspapers. He looked up and winked, his open eye strangely contorted by the lens of his spectacles. "Those'll be for the missus, I guess."

"It's no secret I got a Yankee wife, Mr. Boam. Hand 'em over." Cullen did not quite snatch Mary's letters, but his fingers clamped down firmly before the postmaster was expecting them to. He turned the envelopes and examined the handwriting upon them. The elegant copperplate was unmistakably that of his mother-in-law. The envelopes felt good and thick, too. Mary would be pleased. He tucked them carefully into the inner pocket of his coat and nodded at the other letter. "What's that one?" he asked.

Boam squinted and adjusted his eyeglasses. He held the paper back at arm's length and looked at it without the specs. He frowned. "Some place called Bangor? Two cents owing on that one. Bangor. Fool kinda name. Where's that at?"

The retort that _he_ wasn't the postmaster rose to Cullen's lips, but he restrained himself. "It's in Maine," he said. "I got a brother-in-law up there. Two cents? You sure?"

"Two cents," said the postmaster. "You want to leave it? Wouldn't give half a cent for a letter from _my_ brother-in-law."

Nor would Cullen, but Jeremiah Tate was Mary's second brother, and she'd be glad to hear from him. He drew out his pocketbook, retrieved that morning from the desk in the parlor, and sifted through the coins until he found two dull copper pennies. He set them down on the countertop and took the letter.

"Want them papers?" asked Boam. "You got eight waiting."

Cullen grinned. "Would you pay twenty cents for old news?" he asked. "Just tell me if there's anything interesting." The thin man bridled a little, and Cullen wagged a finger. "Don't pretend like you didn't read 'em. Anything interesting?"

"Not much," Boam admitted with a shrug. "Last week's were full of speculation 'bout the election, but you can save your nickel. Smart money's on Breckenridge for President."

"You think so?" asked Cullen. "His boss hasn't been doing him any favors."

"Oh, it'll be Breckenridge, all right," Boam said with authority. "He's got the Democratic nomination, and everyone knows the Democrats are bound to win."

"Seems to me that Buchanan's making that difficult," said Cullen. "He's tweaked noses North and South, and there's a lot of states in New England that'll vote the Republican ticket just to spite him. Hell, Breckenridge might even have a tough time in Kentucky."

"That's ridiculous!" blustered Boam happily. He loved to talk politics, and he was a better source of information than any newspaper: his predictions were seldom right, but his information was always solid. "Man's bound to win in his home state."

"I heard the senator declined to be nominated," said Cullen. "That so?"

"Yes," Boam said morosely. "Can't imagine why. Now _there's_ a man the whole country could get behind."

"Well, I can't say I blame him. He's not a well man, you know. Remember he took sick the second year of his term? Spent most of the summer—" Cullen slapped Jeremiah's letter against his palm. "—in Maine, trying to recover."

"What's that got to do with anything?" asked Boam. "He could still make a stand. He done good work and he's well-liked. What we couldn't do with a Mississippi man in the White House!"

"President ain't no easy job," Cullen reasoned. "Job like that could kill a man. Davis wants to stay in the Senate, I say let him. Who's Breckenridge up against?"

"Some senator from Illinois," said Boam. "Northern Democrats didn't like our candidate, so they nominated their own. Or was it the other way around? Name of Douglas, I think."

"Douglas?" Cullen sifted through his memories and settled uneasily on the name. "You mean Stephen Douglas. The one who pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The one who set up shop for John Brown to charge in and make trouble."

"That's him." The postmaster shrugged his shoulders. "Don't reckon he'll stand much of a chance."

Ordinarily Cullen might have agreed, but he didn't think the Vice-President was much of an opponent. Through Mary's correspondence with her family he had gathered that Buchanan's efforts to placate both sides of the debate on slavery in the West had wound up pleasing even fewer Yankees than Southerners, and Breckenridge was inexorably tied to that administration.

"Then there's the new party," Boam was saying. "Pack of Whigs got together, and they're calling themselves the Constitutional Unionists. They've got that no-good Yankee-loving Bell for their candidate. The one who says we should all just get along."

"The senator from Tennessee?" asked Cullen. When the postmaster nodded, he said; "I don't know. He talks a lot of sense. Says our rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, so there's no need to split off from the rest of the country. Sounds like a simple solution to me."

"Well, then, you definitely don't want these!" Boam said, gathering the newspapers into a sheaf. "'Nobody's man', they're callin' him: don't stand for nothing, and he ain't against nothing neither. Only chance he's got is if the other three split the vote, which they won't do down here. You mark my words, Mr. Bohannon. Breckenridge is our man."

"I guess I'll have to take your word on that," said Cullen. "You sure there's nothing in with them newspapers that you mighta missed? May be a while before I come in again, and I want to get everything."

Boam fanned through them to show there were no errant letters, then cracked the edge of the pile on the counter to straighten it and rolled the papers into a tube. "What you want me to do with these?"

Cullen shrugged. "Send 'em back. Burn 'em. I don't care. Old news, Mr. Boam. Old news." He pushed himself up off the counter and slipped the letter he was holding into his pocket with the others. "Good day, now." He got as far as the door before he paused and turned back. "Just as a matter of interest," he said; "what about the fourth candidate?"

"The Republican?" Boam snorted derisively. "What're Republicans good for any day? And this one's not even in the Senate. Some back-country nobody."

Cullen jerked his head appreciatively and stepped out into the blinding sunshine. The heat was mounting, and in the distance he heard the wail of a train whistle. He squinted up at the sky, gloriously blue and unblemished by clouds. But the talk of the upcoming election had left him troubled. A great deal was riding on its outcome, with all the uproar of the last four years finally distilled down to the platform agendas of these four men; scions of fractured political parties so torn apart by debate that they couldn't hold themselves together, much less a vast republic of quarrelling states. An inept Vice-President, two indecisive senators and a Republican nobody: what a choice! As much as he might respect as a man Davis's decision not to let himself be nominated, as a voter he had to regret it. At least then he would have known which way to cast his ballot.

There wasn't much sense in fussing over it now, he decided as he started back up the street towards the druggist's. November was a long ways off, and he had a heap of his own troubles to labor through before he'd be called upon to have his say in those of the nation. However the cards fell there wasn't likely to be any quick change. There would only be more talk; more quarrelling; more ineffectual legislation. Or perhaps, he could not help but think unquietly, more slaughter like there had been in Kansas in the wake of Stephen Douglas's piece of indecisive lawmaking.

He reached his destination and opened the door, hurriedly stepping back to hold it for a lady just exiting. Cullen removed his hat with his free hand and bowed neatly to her. "Good morning, ma'am," he said politely.

She flushed crimson and smiled shyly at him, and then hurried off. She wore a faded old calico dress over limp petticoats, and there was a drooping sunbonnet on her head: probably a resident of one of the new-growth shanties. He hoped he hadn't embarrassed her, and he wondered whether she might feel any less intimidated by his fine clothes if she knew how he'd spent the last week. Sometimes the intricate caste system of the county, with its conflicting strata of birth and wealth and breeding and behavior, seemed impossibly ridiculous.

The drugstore was cooler than the telegraph office had been: blinds were pulled closed over the windows, and of course the heat of the telegraph machine with its electrical current was absent. The air smelled strongly of camphor and liniment, and there was a certain sultry mystery to the dark shelves with their ornate glass jars filled with powders and crystals; in the cabinet full of tiny drawers that held the ingredients that the druggist mixed into his cures and his patent medicines. There were blown-glass vats of fluid in every shade imaginable – carmine and azure and a deep, eerie green – with spigots at their bases so the liquid could be easily extracted. One shelf held the mortars; glass and ceramic cruets in every size, each with its own pestle tilted against the rim. Another was filled with porcelain canisters painted with blue curlicues and arabesques and bearing inscrutable Latin words in gold leaf. Yet another contained two dozen identical bottles of quinine, each plastered with a printed label.

The druggist himself was a tall, bearded man whose left eye never seemed to follow the other. He had such a seamless habit of moving his whole head to shift his gaze that it had taken Cullen years to work out that the reason for this was that the left eye was in fact made of glass and set into an empty socket. How the original had been lost he did not know, but its absence was obviously not widely known because it was never discussed. Such a peculiarity, once recognized, would have done the rounds of the county in a matter of hours and become a source of endless speculation. Cullen was content to keep the man's secret, for he was a good sort and deserved his privacy.

He was behind his counter now, rolling pills between thumb and forefinger. He did so quickly, taking off a pinch of the putty he had mixed and whirling his digits in opposing circles five times. The resulting sphere was then deposited on a small tray for baking. Reluctant to interrupt this careful process and content to watch it, Cullen hung back in the shadowy front of the shop.

The pharmacist, however, noticed him almost at once. "Good day, there," he said, rolling one more pill and setting it down at the end of one neat row. "Mr. Bohannon, isn't it? From up Hartwood way?"

"'At's right," said Cullen, drawing nearer so that he stood in the light of the bright kerosene lamp hanging over the compounding table. "How's business?"

"Very good, I'm afraid," said the druggist dolefully. "There's an outbreak of typhoid on the other side of Sowashee Creek, and the ague's been bad this year, too. Still, that's summertime, isn't it? Nothing but work and worry."

"I know just what you mean," said Cullen.

"Yes," said the other man, tucking his chin to look down at his customer's hands. Cullen was suddenly acutely aware of the black smears he had disdained to cover earlier. His fingers twitched as if to curl into the shelter of his palms, but he refused to let them. "I heard."

The druggist raised his head again so that he could meet Cullen's eyes, and he smiled. "What can I do for you today, Mr. Bohannon?" he asked. "Soothing syrup for the little one, maybe? Liver pills for Mrs. Bohannon? Or is it one of your darkies who's ailin'?"

"What's a bottle of anodyne powder go for these days?" Cullen asked. There was something to be said for a man who knew what it was to earn his living, even if he did earn it by mixing nostrums and grinding powders in a tidy little storefront.

"Well, I've got a four-ounce bottle for a dollar-sixty, or an eight-ounce bottle for two," said the pharmacist. "I mix it up myself, so you're guaranteed the very best."

Cullen considered this. He had brought five dollars in notes with him, along with the assortment of small coins in his pocketbook. It was tempting to purchase the larger bottle at the better price, for they would use it eventually. But on the other hand they didn't really need more than a few of doses around the house just in case, and he was likely to need every penny of his money long before he sold the year's tobacco.

"Nothing smaller than four ounces?" he asked.

"No," said the druggist. "I do have sealed packets of some patent stuff from New Hampshire, but that's a dime just for one dose. Still, it's all measured out convenient if you need to take some on the run."

Cullen closed his eyes briefly, mulling over his decision. He didn't know how much of the stuff they used over the course of four months, but he did know he hadn't been sent to fetch any since Gabe was still in long gowns. He wished he could remember which size he had purchased then. It didn't matter, he decided. He couldn't spare a dollar-sixty, much less two, for something that might sit on a shelf almost untouched for another couple of years. The trouble with being short of money was that it cost a man more in the long run, because he couldn't shell out what was needed right off. "Give me four of those, then," he said at last.

The druggist moved to the cabinet behind him and opened one of the little drawers. He took out four small paper envelopes, sealed with paste and printed with the label of a New England manufacturer. He moved to set them on the countertop, and then withdrew his hand. He slipped the envelopes back into the drawer and closed it.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll just measure out an ounce: forty cents' worth. It'll only take a minute, if you don't mind waiting."

Cullen shook his head. "Don't do me no favors," he said defensively. He wasn't about to take charity: he hadn't sunk that far yet.

"It's no favor," said the pharmacist. "I buy the patent stuff for seven cents a dose and sell it for ten; I can mix up eight ounces for eighty cents, and sell it for two dollars. Better for me if you buy my stuff."

That did make sense, and Cullen reconsidered. "How many doses in an ounce?" he asked.

"Twelve or fifteen; depends how you go."

For a moment Cullen was flabbergasted. Presumably the company that made the patent powders could also produce them for a dime an ounce, and maybe even less. The money they had to be clearing on those little packets was mindboggling. No wonder Yankees had a reputation for sharp dealing. Then he shook it off and got back to the point. "I'll take it. Thanks."

"Sure: one ounce it is." He went to another narrow counter where a set of brass scales sat. With a pair of tiny forceps he placed a one-ounce weight on one side. On the other he set a small square of waxed paper. He took a bottle with a handwritten label from a shelf and carefully shook out an ounce. With a pinch of his fingernails he made a crimp in the paper, and used it as a spout to pour the powder into another small bottle. From a sheet of labels he tore one, wrote swiftly upon it with a pencil, and then licked the back and stuck it to the glass. He slipped a cork stopper into the neck of the bottle and handed it to Cullen. "Forty cents," he said affably.

_*discidium*_

His next destination was the grocer's, where he picked up two ounces of ground fennel, two pounds of dried cod, a small bottle of cider vinegar, and six pounds of soup bones fresh from the butcher. The last was not on his wife's list, but Bethel had whispered to him that morning that Mary needed some good rich beef broth to recover her strength. Bethel seemed to know or guess something about Mary's recent illness beyond what Cullen understood of it, but she had stalwartly refused to discuss the matter. That she was offering opinions on a cure now had worried him, and so he spared the extra quarter gladly. If nothing else it would make a nice treat for Mary, who was unaccustomed to the Southern diet dominated by pork and chicken. He wished he could bring her a packet of tea as well, but it was so very expensive. He watched the grocer weigh out the thinly-sawed bones, grained with marrow and with fine shreds of meat still clinging to them, and wrap it carefully in brown paper. He thanked the man, paid for his purchases, and went back to stow them under the seat of the buggy.

The dry-goods store was his last stop. There were two such stores in town now, but the Bohannons had been trading with Jack Townsend for twenty years. He was measuring out yards of daffodil-colored lawn when Cullen came in, but he looked up to grin his greetings. He was a portly gentleman rapidly nearing sixty years of age, with a balding head and luxurious mutton-chop whiskers. While he measured he made cheerful conversation with the lady who had chosen the cloth. Cullen tipped his hat to her, and wandered down the length of the counter, looking at the shelves laden with bolts of cloth; at pairs of stiff new shoes organized by size and style; at a velvet board draped with garters, and another with suspenders. There were kerchiefs in a bright rainbow spread beneath glass, and beside them a small selection of enameled cufflinks. There were scissors and thimbles and awls, buttons and hooks and roll after roll of braid and lace. A small sign advertised that a full selection of ladies' hoopskirts were available upon request. Along the back wall hung pots and pans, both copper and cast iron, and on the floor stood washtubs and butter churns. The other long wall was also lined with a counter, and beyond it were locked cabinets full of razors and hairbrushes, powder compacts, silk gloves in shallow pasteboard boxes. There were china tea services and practical tin dishes, wooden cases full of silver cutlery and simple camp utensils in leather sheathes. There were hunting knives and powder horns, and a long rack of rifles. Shotguns sat on brackets on the wall, and a selection of sidearms occupied its own case. Beside the door were the boxes of patent washing-powder, bottles of hair tonic and cologne water, and the pale and prettily colored bars of factory-made soap wrapped in translucent waxed paper. Townsend's skinny little Negro shop-boy was crouched behind the counter, unloading a crate of nail-brushes.

All the manufactured luxuries and necessities of the modern world seemed represented here, and almost all of them were brought in by rail from the North, or from the ports of New Orleans or Charleston, whence they had come by ship from Europe. Even the cloth that Mr. Townsend was now cutting with his heavy iron shears had likely been woven in Rhode Island or New Jersey, though the cotton from which it was made might have been grown less than two miles from this store. The vast and highly lucrative export of cash crops – cotton and sugar cane and tobacco and rice – allowed the South to purchase anything it needed from elsewhere in the world. It had no incentive to build its own factories or produce its own goods.

The fabric was wrapped in tissue now, and the lady gathered it into her arms and departed, broad tiered skirts swishing. Cullen wandered back down towards the shopkeeper. "Morning, Mr. Townsend," he said, pulling Mary's list out of his waistcoat pocket and consulting it.

"Morning!" Townsend said briskly. "You're out early. Wanting to beat the worst of the heat, I guess? It's been a month for heat, hasn't it? The thermometer at the railway office topped a hundred on Friday!"

"Did it, now?" Cullen asked politely. "I knew she was a scorcher."

"Don't get rain soon, it'll dry out the cotton," said Townsend. Then he laughed. "You won't have to worry about that, at least."

"Oh, tobacco dries out quicker than cotton," said Cullen. "We'll be out there with dippers and buckets, watering by hand, long before the cotton planters worry."

He meant to sound nonchalant, but something of his constant anxiety about the crop must have shown in his eyes, for Townsend's smile faded for a moment. Then he laughed. "Never mind!" he said. "We'll have us a thunderstorm one of these nights, and all the rain a man could hope for. Now what'll I be getting you today?"

"A paper of sewing needles and a card of shirt buttons," Cullen began. "The cheap horn ones, four holes. Small packet of writing paper."

"Flowers on the border, or birds?" asked Townsend. He grimaced in a prelude to sympathy. "You don't need the mourning paper, I hope?"

"No, just the plain stuff," said Cullen. "What's it selling for?"

"Plain white writing paper, one small packet, fifteen cents," Townsend recited, setting it next to the buttons. "What else?"

"A gallon of kerosene, and half a dozen of the tallow candles."

The proprietor wrinkled his nose. "Beeswax burns cleaner," he said. "Got some English ones in nine and twelve-hour lengths. They smell nice, too."

"I'll take the tallow," Cullen said. "Wrap them up so they don't get soft on the way home."

Townsend shrugged, but obliged. "Anything else?" he asked.

Cullen checked his list once more. "A roll of cheesecloth," he said, eyeing the growing pile of purchases with some unease. "And a hank of white linen thread."

"Shirt weight or wool weight?" asked the older man.

He studied his wife's neat handwriting and frowned. "She don't say."

"Take the shirt weight," Townsend advised. "Summertime sewing's most always shirt weight."

"Thanks," Cullen said earnestly. Townsend crossed to the other counter to fetch the cheesecloth, and then tallied up the prices on a small yellow notepad.

"Put it on your account?" he asked affably.

Cullen hesitated. He had just enough money in his pocketbook to cover the purchases, or he thought he did. He would have to count out the pennies to be certain, and that was sure to be awkward – still more awkward if he fell short. He already had goods charged here, and as a rule a man was more comfortable extending credit if he thought it wasn't really needed. He would be relying on Mr. Townsend's good graces and the longstanding trade relationship between them to carry him until winter.

"Yeah, on account," he said. He watched Townsend walk down to the big ledger on the corner of the counter and thumb through the pages until he came to the Bohannons' tally. He took a stubby pencil from behind one large ear and licked the tip, then jotted down the new total. Cullen tried to put on his very best indolent smile. "What do I owe you so far?" he asked conversationally.

"Twenty-six dollars and forty-eight cents," Townsend recited neatly. He stowed the pencil and grinned. "Hell, that's nothing. There's planters 'round here owe eighty or ninety. Least I can count on you to pay up without me houndin' you 'til Judgment Day. Some folks think they's too good to settle what they owe, even when they clear ten thousand on the cotton."

"Sure," said Cullen. He felt suddenly ill, and the headache that had finally abated a little in the night started to thrum behind his eyes again. He didn't like running into debt; didn't like the feeling that he was beholden to any man. That such things were the usual way of business for a country storekeeper did not comfort him much. "The minute I'm off that Louisiana train I'll be in here with your money."

"I know that," Townsend assured him. "Same as every year."

"Right," Cullen breathed, beating back his swarming worries. "Same as every year."

Hastily he gathered the smaller purchases into the crook of one arm and hooked his first two fingers around the handle of the kerosene can. But before he could push off the counter to make his escape, his eyes snagged on the tall glass jars standing near the window where the sunlight could catch their brightly-colored contents. For a moment he was frozen, transfixed and tempted. Then he yielded. "Gimme two cents' worth of them peppermints," he said, digging for his pocketbook with his one free hand and working out the coins with the side of his thumb. "Wrap 'em in separate halves. I got young ones at home could do with a treat."

"Young ones?" asked Townsend as he picked up the sugar tongs and put three small pieces of the brightly striped candy into each of two little paper sacks. "I know your boy'll dote on this, but a strip of sugar cane's good enough for a pickaninny."

"Naw, mine likes peppermints," said Cullen. He took the tiny packets and tucked them into his watch-pocket. "I thank you, Mr. Townsend. Good day."

He snagged the kerosene can, holding it carefully away from his body lest the cap should leak and stain his good pants. He opened the door with an elbow and stepped outside. As it swung closed again he thought he saw Townsend shaking his head in fatherly bewilderment as he turned to shout an order to the shop-boy.

Bonnie and Pike were waiting eagerly for him, having emptied their nosebags long since. Cullen spoke to them as he stowed the can on the floor of the buggy. He put the cheesecloth there also, and tucked the smaller purchases into his various pockets. The paper he put on the buggy seat, weighting it down with the packet of candles. Then he relieved the horses of their nosebags, unwrapped the reins and climbed up onto the box. "Home, Bonnie. Home, Pike!" he called, and the horses broke into their crisp, proud walk. He turned the buggy near the end of the street, where the mid-morning train now puffed and sputtered like a great black dragon and the platform bustled with men hauling baggage and loading or unloading freight. Then they were off, up the street again and on their way out of town.

The homeward ride was pleasant, though Bonnie spent most of it straining against the bit. Cullen restrained her despite the ache in his tired arms, for the day was hot now and he did not want his team overworking themselves. He was beginning to sweat in his fine clothes, and he shucked off his frock coat once he was out of sight of Meridian. It was a relief to reach the shady homeward trail, and he was almost at peace with stepping back under the yoke of farm life. He came to the fence at the edge of his own land just as the sun was cresting the apex of its daily course. He was beginning to feel hungry, and the thought of dining with his family twice in one weekday made him smile. He was whistling softly as he came over the last rise into view of the house, and then his heart dropped like a stone. There was a horse tied off on the paddock fence, grazing calmly in its tack. It was a bay gelding with a white star on its brow, and he knew it almost as well as he knew his own steeds.

It was Doc Whitehead's horse.


	9. Stilted Conversations

**Chapter Nine: Stilted Conversations**

Cullen was out of the buggy almost before the wheels stopped turning. He flung the reins over the porch-rail, not caring if the horses cropped the blossoms off the bluehearts, and cleared the veranda steps in a long leap. The front door was closed against the heat of the day, and he flung it open with a _bang_.

"Mary?" he called, coming into the shady entryway. "Bethel? _Mary?"_

There was no answer, and without pausing to call again he bolted up the stairs. His boots skidded on the smooth floor as he took the corner and he flew down to the closed door at the end of the hall. "Mary?" he cried again, his heart hammering and his throat tight with fear, and he burst into the room.

Mary stiffened in alarm at his inelegant entrance, her hand flying to clutch closed the front of her dressing-gown. She had been bent over the ties, sitting on the edge of the bed. The coverlet had been flung over the footboard and the sheet was untucked and rucked up on the mattress, but Mary was upright and apart from her sudden pallor looked much as she had that morning at breakfast. In his anxiety for her, Cullen had not immediately noticed the other person in the room, standing at the dressing table as he buckled the straps of his bag. He saw him now: another startled face, but set in it eyes that twinkled kindly.

"Doc!" Cullen panted. "Mary. Is everything all right?"

"Yes, of course," Mary said. He noticed belatedly that although beneath the dressing-gown she was down to her chemise, she still had her shoes and stockings on. "Doctor Whitehead stopped by to check in on me, and when I told him I was still a little sore he suggested a quick examination."

"Everything's fine, Cullen," the doctor said kindly, coming to put a hand on the younger man's arm. He drew him into the room and closed the door. "I just wanted to be sure. Never hurts to be certain when a lady's been ill, but everything seems to be in order. I'm sorry I startled you: I suppose you saw my horse?"

"Yuh…" Cullen looked from Doc Whitehead's reassuring expression to Mary's apologetic smile. "Everything's fine?" he parroted.

"Yes," promised Mary firmly. She got to her feet as if to prove it, and crossed to the chair where her clothing lay draped over the back. She picked up her pantalets, which were mercifully free from bloodstains. "Why don't you go and offer Doctor Whitehead a drink while I get dressed?"

"Sure." His panic had left him now and he felt bewildered and drained. For a terrible minute, coming into a silent house, he had been afraid that things had taken a terrible turn. He opened the door and held it. "Doc?"

The doctor stepped into the hall and Cullen looked back at his wife questioningly. Mary only smiled and shook her head ever so slightly, and so he retreated, following Whitehead down the stairs and then ushering him into the parlor.

"You know how to give a man a fright, Doc," he said as he went to the little table by the fireplace and plucked the stopper from the whiskey decanter. It was only about a third full, and there was no bottle in reserve, but he poured them both a generous glassful and offered one to the older man. "Coming to call when a fella's away from home like that."

"I didn't expect to find you away from home," said Whitehead, saluting his host and taking a swallow of the amber liquid. Cullen knocked back a quick shot from his own glass and felt it steady his jangled nerves. "This time of year I expected you to be out there working."

"I should be," said Cullen. "Only it'd been four weeks since I'd gone for the mail, and—"

"Miss Mary told me," Doc said. His eyes were gentle and his expression grave. "What's this about you taking sick in the tobacco?"

Cullen crossed to his armchair and flopped down in it, stretching his legs before him. He gestured that his guest should take a seat as well, and Doc settled on the horsehair sofa, leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees. "It was nothing," Cullen said. He swirled the fluid in his glass and watched it for a moment, then took another swallow. He had been missing his whiskey, he realized.

"Why don't you tell me about it, and I'll decide if it's nothing," said Doc.

"Not much to tell," said Cullen. "I came over dizzy and I made a mess in the grass. Guess I got up too soon, 'cause it happened again, and that time I couldn't get back to it. Spent Saturday afternoon in bed. That's all."

"Miss Mary said you had a terrible headache. And chills in the night?" the doctor pressed mildly. "Any blurred vision?"

"Sure," said Cullen. "Comes with being dizzy, don't it? I'm fine now."

"Are you, son? You're awful pale." The kind eyes narrowed a little, as if searching for something.

Cullen found it impossible to lie to Doc Whitehead. "I've still got a bit of a headache," he said. "Nothing I can't cope with. Certainly nothing you got to worry about. Nate and Bethel figure it's tobacco sickness."

"Tobacco sickness?" Doc frowned. "I've never seen it in a white man before."

At this Cullen snorted. "You know many white men, do you, out there six mornings straight topping fifty acres of plants?" He grinned to cover his bitterness and took another mouthful of whiskey. "Never mind, Doc: I got it figured out. We'll be taking it in half-days from now on. What makes me angry is that it seems the darkies have all had their turns at it, and none of 'em seen fit to mention it before this." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in an ineffectual attempt to ease the throbbing in his head. "Enough about me. Is Mary really fine?"

"She's still recovering," said the doctor; "and I'm a little concerned that she's still having pain. But the bleeding's stopped and there's no inflammation of the pelvis. She's young and she's well-fed: she'll be back to herself in no time." He shifted in his seat, turning more towards the other man. "I did want a word, though, about… well, son, about a husband's privilege."

His desire to press again for details of his wife's illness was momentarily diverted. Cullen nodded in understanding. "She ain't well enough yet," he said. "That's plain enough, forgive me for saying, Doc. I ain't pressed her. We don't got that sort of marriage: if she don't want it, I don't want it. Even when I _do_ want it, if you take my meaning."

"I do, Cullen, and that's admirable," said the doctor. "Trouble is, from the way she was sort of hinting at things I think she _might_ be wanting it, and she might try 'n set that hoop spinning before she's healed up proper. It don't do to take chances with this sort of thing, Cullen. I'm telling you even if she does try to… suggest it, you need to hold back for at least a couple weeks. I don't know that she'd approve of me coming to you with this, but you got to know. Any kind of strain at a time like this could do real harm to a lady, even a strong healthy one like your Mary."

Cullen's stomach did a slow, worried roll. "Time like what, Doc?" he asked. "What's _wrong_ with her?"

There was the smallest flicker of uncertainty in the older man's eyes. "I don't… there's things even modern medicine… it's womanly trouble, Cullen: that's all I can tell you. But it's on the mend, and there's nothing to worry about except making sure she gets the rest she needs. She's well enough to be out of bed, and she obviously feeling able to wear her corsets. What about her appetite?"

"I haven't much noticed," Cullen confessed. "Truth is we don't have more'n three or four meals together in a week these days. I'm up before dawn and out 'til after dark most of the time. Or was, until Saturday." He grimaced ruefully. "Got to see that don't happen again."

Doctor Whitehead took another sip of whiskey and stared down into the glass for a long moment. When he looked up again his brows were knit worriedly. "Is it really so bad, son?" he asked.

"Not if we can make this crop," Cullen said. "If we have a good yield and I get a good price we'll be all right. Just a lot of hard work and not much to hope for, that's all."

Doc's left hand opened, extending in a brief abortive motion as if he meant to plant it bracingly on Cullen's knee. He thought better of it, however, and let his arm fall back. "I know your father would have wanted to leave you better provided-for," he said.

"I can make my own living," Cullen said defensively. "Only… only so long as we get the odd rain between now and October. That's farming, ain't it?" He chuckled a little, bitterly. "One eye on the crop and the other on the sky. Big or small, planters all got that in common."

"Speaking of planters, Miss Mary said you turned down an offer on some land? You got more than you can work as it is. Why not sell a little?"

"It weren't as simple as that," Cullen said. "Abel Sutcliffe's tryin' to push me out. I sell to him, next thing he's got tax assessors crawling over the place, or the sheriff, or worse."

"You done anything to warrant attention from the sheriff?" Doc asked, looking suddenly concerned. He remembered all too well the wild youth of the Bohannon heir, for it had fallen to him to patch Cullen up after his various scrapes. "Man with a wife and child ought to keep his nose clean."

This time Cullen's laugh was genuine. Like the whiskey it warmed him, and he grinned. "Hell no, I been good," he said. "Don't mean I want the law poking around. I got a right to my property."

Doc Whitehead's eyes rolled dolefully. "Not you, too," he groaned. "Seems that's all anyone wants to talk about these days. You'd think the government was going to come swarming down here to dispossess us all."

"I didn't mean that property," Cullen said, his expression darkening a little. "Though I wouldn't put it past Sutcliffe to make trouble for them, too, if he thought he could get away with it. What he's got against me I'll never know, 'cept that I'm my own man and make no secret of it."

"And you spit on him," said Doc.

"You didn't hear that from Mary," said Cullen suspiciously.

"No, I didn't. I was up there looking in on Mrs. Sutcliffe and heard the whole story." Doc shook his head. "You need to stop butting heads with folks as can make your life a misery."

"If you heard it from him you didn't hear the whole story," Cullen argued. "And I spat _at_ him, not _on_ him. I was hot and tired and madder 'n a hornet. He implied I couldn't feed my family. Called me trash. He was eyeing up Meg. He deserved to be sent away with a flea in his ear, and he coulda got worse."

"Maybe." Doc shook his head mournfully. "But he's a wealthy man, and he's out gunning for you now. You know he'll tell everyone from here to Jackson that you're working your own tobacco."

"Then I guess he's pushed me out anyhow." With a jerk of his head Cullen drained the last of the whiskey. "Out of county society if not off my land. But county society ain't had much use for me since I brought home a Northern beauty and broke their daughters' hearts. Silly when you think of it, 'cause if I'd wed somebody like Greta Trussell her father'd be out here to shoot me the minute he heard I'm working my own fields."

"I won't deny it'll hurt your standing in the eyes of some," said Doc. "But you're well-liked by the right sort of people and you come from a good old family. That counts for more than money, and you know it. Lot of folks will just shake their heads and say it's a pity you got to do it, but after all your grandfather and most of theirs had to make do with one or two slaves in the early days. It takes time to build up a fortune."

"I don't give a damn about building a fortune," Cullen muttered. "I just want to keep a roof over my family and food on the tables of my people. And maybe buy my son a real pair of shoes. That's what Sutcliffe can't abide; him and his forty-thousand-a-year cotton fields. What'd I do with that kind of money, Doc? It'd only be a worry to me. I spend enough time worrying over the money I got."

Doctor Whitehead chuckled. "That's so," he said. "Seems nobody worries more about money than folks who got too much of it. But you _are_ keeping food on the table, aren't you, Cullen? I mean, Miss Mary seems well-nourished enough…"

"Hell, yes!" said Cullen. "We got food. It's simple stuff, but there's plenty. And now the garden's coming in we got something fresh with most meals, too. Go ask Bethel if you don't believe me."

"I believe you. Don't go looking for a quarrel where there ain't one, son." Doc smiled and finished the last sip in his glass.

There was a soft, respectful knock at the parlor door. Bethel stood on the threshold, eyes meekly lowered and hands folded in the posture she affected with company. "Beg pardon, Mist' Cullen," she said politely.

"What is it, Bethel?" he asked. He set his empty cup on the little round end table.

"Them horses is eatin' all the flowers," Bethel said. Her tone was meek, but her eyes were flashing. Had the doctor not been present she would have long since launched into a stern lecture. "Maybe you want me t' fetch Nate up from the yams to put 'em in the stable?"

"Hanged if I ain't forgot the horses!" Cullen exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "You'll excuse me, Doc: I got to—"

"Go on," the older man said. "I'll be taking my leave just as soon as I pay my respects to your lovely wife."

Cullen bared his teeth in a terse smile of thanks, gesturing apologetically, and then ran from the room to secure his forgotten team.

_*discidium*_

When the afternoon sun was casting long shadows and the heat was no longer so fierce, Mary tied on her work apron and her deepest-brimmed bonnet. Gabe was with Bethel, "helping" her with supper, and Mary was going out to see what she could do in the vegetable patch. Doctor Whitehead's impromptu visit had eased her niggling worry about the aches she still felt. He had told her that she might be sore for a while yet, and that she ought to do what housework she could tolerate. She didn't really suppose that he meant she ought to be working in the garden, but she intended to keep a close watch on her pain and to try it regardless. Bethel helped Lottie as much as she could, but they had put in an enormous quantity of vegetables this year and they all seemed to be ripening at once. Cullen had gone out after a hasty dinner to join the others in the yams, and Mary wanted to make herself useful.

Lottie was already out among the carrots, sitting crosslegged with a row on either side. Both her dark hands worked, one weeding in each row and depositing the useless harvest in her lap. Her bare toes wriggled now and again, flicking away an ant or evading the tickling hem of her dress. She smiled when she saw Mary.

"Basket's right there, Missus Bohannon," she said. "Beans be needing picking. Don' take none but the greenes' ones."

"Thank you, Lottie, yes," said Mary, somewhat amused. She had spent time in the garden before, but Lottie seemed to like having someone to instruct. She picked up the low willow basket and balanced it on her hip. The rows of beans were not far from the carrots, and climbing their stakes they were almost waist-high. She set about picking the slender green crescents with her free hand, setting them carefully into the basket. Once she had a rhythm to her picking, she felt able to resume conversation. "How are the carrots?"

"Growin'," Lottie said. "Be ready soon, at leas' for table eating. The horses, they'll have to wait a bit longer." She craned her neck, squinting into the sun. "Missus?" she said. "What the doctor say?"

"I'm better," said Mary. "I'm good as new."

"Oh, I's glad to hear that," Lottie said. "What we-all would do 'thout you I don' know. Jus' about break Mist' Gabe's heart, I think." She frowned thoughtfully. "But Ma say Massa littler 'n him when _his_ mama die. That so?"

"I believe it is so, Lottie, yes," said Mary. Cullen seldom spoke of his mother, who had died in unfruitful childbed. Suddenly she was tremendously relieved that she had enjoined Doctor Whitehead to keep the secret of her miscarriage. It would surely have terrified him. Casting about for some change in subject, she asked; "What did you do yesterday?"

"Usual Sunday things," said Lottie. "Ma 'n me said our prayers after breakfast, an' Ma went down Hartwood way to see Pa. Saw to the chickens, went climbin' that big oak tree by the tobacco fiel', came back 'n put on cold dinner fo' the men. Elijah said I were botherin' him, so I went down the creek-bottom. I jus' waded, Missus, I promise!" she added hastily. "I wouldn' go swimmin' on the Lord's Day."

A question that Mary had been meaning to put to the child for some time came to her. "Lottie, why doesn't your mother take you to see your father anymore?" she asked. "You haven't been to see him in such a long while."

Lottie shrugged her shoulders. "Don' know. I 'spects they wants their time 'lone, but then Ma say nex' week Pa goin' come over here an' mebbe stay late. Be nice to see him."

"I'm sure it would," said Mary. As usual when confronted with the uglier aspects of slavery she felt rather ill. The idea of a broken family filled her with dread. She could not imagine what it might be to have to wait an entire week to see Cullen, or to bring up her boy alone while her husband lived on someone else's land less than two miles away, unable to leave that land except on Sundays. She supposed perhaps the darkies were used to such things, but that did not make it right.

In Meg's case there seemed no solution. Her husband was a foreman, and a very valuable slave. Certainly Mr. Sutcliffe would never set him free. Even if Mary might have persuaded Cullen to free Meg and Lottie they would not have been welcome to live liberated on Hartwood Plantation. And Cullen certainly had no intention of selling them to Mr. Sutcliffe. He did not even particularly like Meg going over there, and when Mary had brought it to his attention that Lottie no longer made the trips he had responded strongly.

"Good!" he had snapped, steely eyes dark. "She's better off here."

Mary had protested that a child ought to be able to see her father. Cullen had countered that she could see him when he came over onto their land.

"But what about her friends at Hartwood?" Mary had asked. "She plays with the other children when she's over there. Surely she ought to have a chance to mix with boys and girls her own age."

But Cullen had been adamant that Mary refrain from raising the matter with Meg. Since then he had made it a point to take Lottie with him when he went calling on the Ainsleys or the Grahams so that she could spend time with the Negro children on those plantations while he saw to his business, but he refused to take her to Hartwood. He was equally stubborn in declining to explain his reasons.

There was already good heap of beans in the basket, but the row still stretched on ahead. Mary's back was starting to hurt her from bending to reach the lower vines, and she wondered how anyone could bear to work the tobacco, where the picking was harder and the stooping lower. She twisted her torso so that her stays shifted a little, exerting their gentle pressure on the sore place. She was getting well again, she reminded herself. Doctor Whitehead had said so. It had been very kind of him to drop by unannounced just to see how she was faring. She had not expected him to insist upon an exam, but the faint worry in his gentle eyes had swayed her. She did wish that Cullen had not had to come home to see the doctor's horse outside. He had looked half-crazed with fright when he burst into the room: she had never intended to scare him.

It was good of the doctor, too, to declare that as he hadn't been sent for there should be no question of a fee. Cullen had tried to argue this point, but Doctor Whitehead had remained firm. He had only looked in on an old friend, he had said, on his way back from his call on the Sutcliffes. He had insisted on checking Mary, not the other way 'round, and he wasn't in the habit of pushing his services on friends. He'd had a very pleasant talk, he said, and some very fine whiskey, but thank you he wouldn't stay to dinner. His affable manner and his firm words had finally won the day and Cullen had put away his pocketbook. He never would have done it if he had not been convinced the doctor had no ulterior motive, but Mary was glad. Over his hurried meal her husband had made passing mention of their bill at the dry-goods store: scarcely more than a word, but his shoulders had sagged and the corners of his mouth tightened in worry. It was early in the year to be in debt, and his small hoard of bank notes and gold would not last forever.

The thought of the journey into town made Mary's hands itch. She had four letters waiting for her on the mantelpiece in the parlor, but she was determined not to open them until the day's work was over. She was thirsty for news from home, and the letter from Jeremiah was a special treat. She could not imagine what might have driven her brother to write to her, for he was a staunch abolitionist and heartily disapproved of her choice to marry a slave-owner. He was a strong-willed man, and as much as she loved him she had to admit he had a rather officious manner. He had never got on well with Cullen: bringing them together was like mixing kerosene and wine, or setting a match to black powder. Mary had been mildly surprised to discover that Cullen had paid the postage due on Jeremiah's letter, but she supposed she ought not to be. He had done it for her sake, of course, as he did so many other unpleasant things.

If she shaded her eyes and craned her neck she could just make out dark shapes on the far end of the sweet potato field: two of them, crouching with arms outstretched. The other two were likely further along, out of sight beyond the roll in the land. At this distance she could not tell who it was she saw: lean bodies in work shirts all looked the same. She hoped the work was not too hard and that they would not keep at it past suppertime. Doctor Whitehead's carefully neutral expression had not wholly concealed his consternation when she had told him of Cullen's illness. She hoped they had discussed the subject during their short time alone.

Lottie had finished with her carrots and was now in amongst the beans as well. She picked into Mary's basket, which was soon brimming, and she hummed as she worked.

_*discidium*_

Cullen stood over the washbasin in the kitchen, scrubbing the grime from his hands and arms. The water turned swiftly black, saturated with thin mud, and he flung it through the open kitchen door before pouring out a fresh measure. Behind him Bethel was stirring the large stock pot, in which was brewing the beef broth that now filled the kitchen with its hearty dark scent. It would not be ready until morning, when it had simmered long enough to leach every drop of nourishment out of the bones, but when it was ready Mary could have all she could drink and Bethel had promised there would be enough to use as the base for a thick bean soup. His appetite definitely seemed to be recovered, for the prospect left him ravenous.

His hands were as clean as they were likely to get now, but he made one last pass with the nail brush just to be certain. Then he changed the water again and bent stiffly to wash his face. The cool water felt delicious on his dry skin and he rubbed enthusiastically. Then he groped for the threadbare towel and patted his beard dry. He had shed his work-boots outside, and he padded on stocking feet to the dining room door.

"Woah, hol' up there," Bethel said, hurrying to stop him. Cullen halted obediently, and she reached up to try to smooth his unruly hair. "I don' know why you doesn't keep a comb in here," she said. "You goin' in to see your wife lookin' like a lynx caught out in a thunderstorm."

"Wish I was," said Cullen. He glanced back out the door at the brilliant red glow of the sky. "Don't look like rain tonight."

"You goin' give yourself a misery waitin' for rain," Bethel said sagely. "It come or it don't: not a thing you can do 'bout it. Now you go kiss Missus Mary, an' I'll be in directly with supper. She pick them green beans herself, you know."

"She was out in the garden?" he asked. "She's not well…"

"She gettin' weller ev'ry day, an' it good for her to feel she helpin'," declared Bethel. "Don' you scold her. She weren't out there more'n a hour an' it put some color back in her cheeks. Jus' be sure you say how good them beans be."

"Yes, ma'am," Cullen said playfully. Despite his weariness he felt better for having spent the day well out of the tobacco. The yams were almost all hilled: he would let Nate and Elijah finish them in the morning while he took a look at the wagon. He let Bethel make one last attempt to tame his hair, and then he escaped into the dining room.

He was met with an unexpected whoop of delight, and felt his whole face brighten into a grin. Gabe, who was ordinarily abed at this hour, was sitting on his chair, perched atop the pear crate they used to boost him up to the table.

"Pappy's done workin'!" he crowed happily, kicking at the edge of the seat.

"Not quite," said Cullen, rounding the table to tousle his boy's hair. "I still got to see to the stock once I've eaten, but we did good work in the yams today. What are you doing up so late?"

"Mama said I may," Gabe informed him. "It a treat."

"Yes, it is." Cullen bent and kissed him, scarcely feeling the grinding of his vertebrae or the straining of his muscles in his happiness. "Ain't Mama good to us rascals?"

"I thought you might want to change for supper," Mary said pleasantly.

Cullen looked down at his rough shirt and his pants with the patched knees ground thick with dirt. "I can if you want me to," he said, puzzled; "but I ain't exactly in the habit these days."

"You might at least put on your waistcoat," Mary told him. There was a lilt to her voice, and he saw now the glimmer in her eyes. She gestured to his chair, from the back of which hung his watered-silk vest. For a moment he did not know what to think: surely she did not mean for him to put on one of his very best garments over a sweat-stained old shirt. Then he understood. His wife had been searching his pockets.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe Gabe would like to try it on. Would you like to try it on, son?"

He picked it up by the shoulders and shook it out. Gabe nodded eagerly. "I try it on," he said. "Jus' like Pappy."

He lifted his little arms and Cullen settled the garment over them. It was enormously too large, and slipped immediately down around his elbows like a robe of state embellished with jet buttons instead of sapphires.

"I wonder what you got in your pockets," Cullen said thoughtfully.

Gabe's brow furrowed as he considered this, and he bent over his lap. His small fingers went carefully to the pocket of his trousers and he tried to peel it open. So solemn was his expression and so intense his concentration that Cullen could not help chuckling. "Your new pockets," he hinted.

Gabe looked up at him, frowning. "New pockets?" he said. "I only gots one pocket. See?"

"In the waistcoat, darling," Mary said, smiling radiantly. "What's in the pocket of Pappy's waistcoat?"

The child reeled in the crisp cloth and plopped its corner in his lap. He squeezed the bulge of the pocket experimentally, and then put his whole hand into a space only just large enough for a watch. He let loose a shrill squeal of delight loud enough to make the lamp-glass shudder, and he brought out the two little paper packets.

"One for you," said Cullen; "and one for Lottie. You can give it to her tomorrow, but Mama will hold onto it for now."

Mary held out her hand and Gabe obediently deposited one of the crumpled bags into it. The other he tore open with vigor, sending the pieces of peppermint candy tumbling onto the table. He clapped his hands and seized one, popping it into his mouth and biting down noisily. Cullen watched delightedly as his boy's eyes rolled in bliss and he smacked his small lips. It would have been worth a hundred dollars to see that expression: at a penny it was a bargain.

"What do you say to your father, dear?" prompted Mary gently.

Gabe made a garbled attempt at speech that came out chiefly in vowels. Then he parked the shards of peppermint in his cheek like a squirrel and tried again. "T'ank you, Pappy," he said solemnly.

"You're welcome," Cullen said, enunciating carefully. Mary was trying to teach their son his manners, and that meant slow and careful reinforcement whenever they were plied. He scooped up the two remaining pieces and tipped them into his empty coffee cup. "What's say we put these on the sideboard, so you can have 'em tomorrow?" he asked.

An older child would have protested the confiscation of his gift, but Gabe was occupied with the sweet in his mouth, and he nodded affably. In spite of his excitement he was starting to take on that glassy, doe-eyed look that meant he was ready to fall asleep. "Should I take someone upstairs?" Cullen asked as he eased his son's arms out of the waistcoat and hung it on the fourth chair.

Mary shook her head. "Bethel said she would. He's had his supper, but I thought you might want to give him his present before he went to bed."

"Present?" Gabe said drowsily, the word coming out around a mouth still busy with the candy.

"What if it weren't for him?" asked Cullen, teasing.

"Then I suppose you'd be cross with me," said Mary.

"I could never be cross with you." He paused by her chair so that he could kiss her cheek. This time his back declined to bend as far as it ought, and he was obliged to crook his knees to reach his goal. Her skin was soft and warm beneath his lips and he felt a stirring of desire despite the weight of his fatigue. He quelled it as he straightened. Doc Whitehead had told him they had to take it easy for a couple more weeks at least.

Cullen sat down just as Bethel came out of the kitchen with their plates. She retreated again to bring in water and Cullen's coffee. Then she gathered Gabe into her arms.

"Come on, honey," she cooed. "It time li'l boys be off to bed."

Gabe made a vague, somnolent protest, but he was already nestling against her. Bethel cuddled him expertly, her age-wizened hands as capable now as they had been when Cullen was small. There was love in her eyes as she looked down at the little boy. "Say goodnight to Mama an' Pappy," she said.

"G'night, Mama. G'night, Pappy," Gabe obliged. His eyes were closed and his thumb began to creep up towards his mouth. So smoothly that her motion seemed almost a natural extension of her step, Bethel guided his wrist away as she moved to the door. They heard her steady feet on the stairs, and the creak of the nursery door. That was one set of hinges Cullen did not keep oiled, for there were times it was nice for a man and his wife to have a little advance warning if their child was abroad in the night.

As Cullen's gaze returned to the table he saw Mary smiling down at her hand. The other bag of sweets still rested in her palm. "It was good of you to think of bringing something for the children," she said. "With money as tight as it is I wondered if you would."

"When I was growing up that was the best part of Pappy going into town," said Cullen. "Up until I got old enough to go with him, of course. Then I liked walking tightrope on the railroad tracks and throwing rocks onto the stationhouse roof."

He picked up his fork and knife and started sawing at his slice of fried salt pork. His mouth watered as he bit into it, but he was thinking of fresh meat. It was too early in the year for good hunting, unfortunately. He might have considered going after a jackrabbit or two to satisfy the craving, if it weren't for Sutcliffe's taunt still ringing in his ears. Well, he thought, tomorrow night there'd be a bowl of rich beef soup. That was almost as good. He went next for a forkful of the green beans, parboiled and buttered, and remembered what Bethel had said. It was no challenge to raise enthusiastic words, for they were crisp and fresh, and they were sweet.

"These are delicious," he said happily. "It's a fine thing to have fresh vegetables again, ain't it?"

"Yes," said Mary, a faint blush of pleasure on her cheeks. "The garden is coming along beautifully, though I think I might water the peas tomorrow. Some of the leaves are looking a little crisp in the tips."

Cullen's high spirits evaporated as thoughts of rain came back. It could not be another dry summer. It must not be another dry summer. "You be sure and have Lottie tote the bucket," he said. "I don' want you doing yourself harm."

"Yes, of course," she said serenely. She was focused spreading a thin scraping of butter over her bread, and she did not seem to notice as he studied the sheen of her auburn hair in the glow of the sunset.

"Mary?" he said softly. "What'd Doc Whitehead say to you 'bout what was wrong? I know he says you're getting better, but what made you take sick in the first place?"

She looked up, her bright eyes suddenly dimmed and guarded. "Why, Cullen, it was just a spot of lady's trouble," she said. "Surely he told you that."

"Yes he did," said Cullen with care; "but the truth is I don't rightly know what that means. I didn't grow up 'round womenfolk – well, apart from Bethel, and she's as healthy as a horse."

"It's nothing." Mary was flushing now, not the pretty pink of delight but a hot red flare that sat in a livid blossom on each cheekbone. "Just my monthly time come in badly, and early."

"Come in late by my reckoning," Cullen murmured. His chest felt tight, but he couldn't say quite why. Did not, in fact, want to say.

"Oh. Maybe it did," she said nebulously. "Please, Cullen, this really isn't suitable talk for the supper table, even if it is only the two of us."

He breathed a little easier at that. Of course she was right, and her discomfiture made sense. Surely there wasn't anything more to be concerned about, or she would have told him. Still he felt a small unsettling mass at the back of his throat. "Mary, you would tell me, wouldn't you, if something's wrong?" he asked.

She looked up at him and smiled unsteadily. "There's nothing wrong," she sighed. "Not anymore."


	10. Under the Wagon

**Chapter Ten: Under the Wagon**

The kitchen door swung closed and from the stoop came the heavy sounds of Mister Cullen sitting to drag on his boots. Bethel listened to the familiar creak of sunbaked leather, and the leaden fall of a freshly shod foot. Then with a shifting of sweat-stiffened cloth and a creak of weathered wood he rose. He groaned as he did so: a low, unhappy sound that tore at Bethel's heart. Poor fool boy: it never occurred to him that she could hear every sound on the other side of that door. Had he even suspected, he never would have allowed himself to give voice to his pains and the weariness that was grinding away at him slowly day after long, hard day.

When the sound of his doggedly plodding feet faded off towards the barn, Bethel picked up the rag and got back to wiping the supper dishes. The fine old china that Miss Caroline had brought with her from Charleston all those years ago was chipped and fading now, but it was still beautiful. The pattern of vines and flowers, delicately painted by craftsmen in France, always stirred Bethel's emotions. The vines were something Miss Caroline had called 'Canthus leaves, but it was the blossoms that Bethel cared for: the five-petaled blossoms like little blue stars twinkling amid the greenery. "They're forget-me-nots, Bethel," her young mistress had said as she lifted a plate carefully from the straw in the packing crate. Her eyes had sparkled with the dazzling delight of a young bride. "They're a symbol of love that goes on and on, even in death."

Of course Miss Caroline had been young; sheltered and idealistic and both eager and anxious as she stepped into her new life. But then Miss Caroline had never had the chance to be anything but young, and her short years of marriage had done nothing to blunt her innocence. Still it was at that moment Bethel liked best to remember her: with her curls swinging down to kiss her smooth cheeks, and her high-waisted muslin gown festooned with blossoms gathered from the magnolia tree, as she unpacked her wedding treasures in her new home. It was better than remembering her toiling under the bulk and nausea of her first difficult pregnancy, or wan and weakened from the effort of the birth and the baby's constant tending, or writhing in agony on bloodied sheets as the second child, early and stillborn, snatched her fragile life away. It was so much better to remember her with the ivory-colored plate in her hand, tracing the gilded rim with one slim finger while she spoke of love that went on and on.

Bethel had been a house-slave in Miss Caroline's parents' stately home overlooking the sea. When their daughter was born she had been newly promoted to the position of upstairs maid: half a year younger than Lottie was now, skinny and gawky in the new dignity of her real shoes and starched apron. By the time Miss Caroline was old enough to go to balls and musicales and to receive beaux, Bethel's duties had been extended from making beds and laying fires and drawing baths to dressing hair and lacing dainty satin evening slippers. She had become Miss Caroline's confidante: the one who undressed her after a late night of dancing and heard the breathless stories of handsome young men and gallantly foolish old ones, of scrumptious midnight dainties and the daring new waltzes that sent the matrons into flurries of disapproval. She had listened to the young girl's eager fantasies about the man she would marry; the house she would live in; the children she would have. It was to Bethel that Miss Caroline had first confessed that one of her many suitors had at last caught her eye.

It had been the expectation of the family, and indeed of Miss Caroline herself, that she would marry a scion of one of Charleston's old families. These dynasties, descended from the early settlers who had come from England under the auspices of King Charles, represented some of the finest bloodlines of the South. Coming as she did from one of these families, it had seemed only natural for Miss Caroline to marry among them. But when the time came for her to give her heart she bestowed it not on one of the boys she had known since babyhood, but upon a stranger from far-off Mississippi. He had been staying at the home of Mark Craven: the two had been at the College together, and the out-of-state planter had come to town for a summer to visit old haunts and make inquiries about a new venture he had in the works. He wanted to put up some of his father's cotton land in tobacco, and he spent his days riding out to survey plantations growing the crop, or buying up experienced slaves at auction. His nights he had passed trailing his school friend from party to party in and around Charleston. Miss Caroline had inevitably caught his eye, as she did most men: she had been as beautiful as a wax doll, as light on her feet as a pepperseed moth, and as quietly charming as a lullaby. The gracious sweetness so aggressively cultivated in girls of her class had come naturally to her, but beneath that soft and silken wrapping was a thin blade of steel; as supple and unyielding as the sabre her grandfather had swung for Liberty.

It was that secret rod of courage that had carried her, head held high, down to her father's drawing room to tell him that she meant to marry the vivacious, hard-riding Mississippian. She had borne her sire's imperious refusal with grace, and countered with her own quiet but immutable arguments. When he grew still and wrathful, she remained collected and unintimidated. When at last he had bellowed that no daughter of his would ever go off to wild Indian country with some backwoods Scotsman, she had said, in a serene voice that nonetheless had carried through the heavy inlaid doors and up to the first landing where Bethel stood listening; "I shall marry him, Papa, and we shall be very happy together." Only when she had retreated at last to the safety of her boudoir and the comfort of Bethel's faithful presence had she collapsed on the velvet stool of her dressing table, quaking like a leaf in a hurricane at her own temerity.

The war for Miss Caroline's hand had been a fierce one, and Bethel had never learned the details of many of the battles – for they had been fought in gentlemen's clubs and smoking rooms, or up on the heights above the port by two ramrod figures on horseback. But she had known every intimate detail of the other campaign: the one waged quietly and gently over the breakfast table, among the roses in the walled garden of the beautiful house in town, on the shady carriage-trails of the family lands. Slowly and tenderly, Miss Caroline had brought her father around to her way of thinking: helping him to reimagine his dreams for her, showing him the happiness she found in her paramour, and above all quieting his terror at the thought of losing her to a distant state and a husband he could not rule from afar. In the end he had relented, and had given his consent to the marriage.

There had been nothing really objectionable about Mister Bohannon. To be sure, he had been a little rough around the edges by the standards of South Carolina, and his grammar had been deplorable. But he had been a man of exquisite manners and good education, with a mastery of all gentlemanly pursuits. The worst of it was that he lived in Mississippi: despite her soothing reassurances to her father even Miss Caroline had been frightened by the prospect of moving so far away from the city of her birth. She had been equally anxious at the prospect of suddenly finding herself mistress of a plantation full of unfamiliar slaves. It had been her mother's suggestion that Bethel might make a very suitable wedding present, and at that offer Miss Caroline had very nearly wept for gratitude and joy.

"You must come with me and help me to establish myself, Bethel dear," she had said on the last night of her maidenhood. "Oh, I know I shall make a success of it if you are there to help me! I want to be a good wife. A good _Mississippi_ wife. You must help me to do it. And when I shall have babies… oh, Bethel, I wouldn't want anyone but you to look after my babies!"

And Bethel, of an age then to be aching for children of her own, had undertaken that sacred trust. She had come to Mississippi with her mistress and had helped her to establish herself. She had helped her to become a good wife in the vital young air of Lauderdale County. And when the baby had come she had helped Miss Caroline to look after him until the second pregnancy, which never should have been allowed to happen, had carried her off and left Cullen Bohannon without a mother more than a month short of his third birthday.

The ropy muscles along the inside of Bethel's elbows, made lean and strong with hard work of the sort that she never would have turned her hand to as headwoman of a large Charleston house, ached with emptiness as she dried the dome of the butter-dish and set it on its base. She remembered holding the small body clad in a somber black mourning frock, too worn out with weeping to writhe anymore, his sweet soprano voice too hoarse to sob. He had hiccoughed quietly against her breast, one small white hand clutching at the row of buttons down her front while silent tears trickled down the side of his nose. Bethel had tried to shelter him as much as possible from the comings and goings of the neighbors, from the obligatory wailing in the slave quarters, from his father's grim misery and his grandfather's respectful sobriety. It was impossible that so small a child could have understood all that was happening, but one thing was very clear to him: his mother was gone. He wanted her and she was gone, and where she had gone he could not follow.

Bethel had consoled him then, and she had comforted him through the piteous, weeping weeks immediately following Miss Caroline's death. Next had come a period of irrational rages, when he would scream and kick and fling himself off of the veranda steps or out of the arms of his unsuspecting father. In these fits of inarticulate torment Bethel had simply hefted him, still kicking and shrieking and struggling, onto her shoulder and carried him off to the kitchen or even, when it was particularly bad or the master had visitors, down to Cap's sister's cabin on the other side of the willows. Sooner or later he always exhausted himself, and when that happened she would ease her deep, bracing grip and let him sleep in her arms where he might feel safe.

Then one day, when the cotton was budding and the young tobacco plants were above his dark little head, Mister Cullen had awakened happily. He had gone about his business that day as if he were any other little boy: climbing the back of the horsehair sofa, hiding under the sideboard to leap out and startle his grandfather, sneaking fingerfuls of strawberry jam behind Bethel's back. At first she had thought they were only in the eye of the storm, but as days turned to weeks and weeks to months his temperament had remained sweet and his approach to life eager and mischievous. Though for years afterward he had sometimes awakened weeping in the night, mourning in his dreams a mother he could scarcely remember, he had been for the most part a merry little boy.

And he had been Bethel's boy. Cap, though in every other way an ideal husband, had not managed to discharge that particular marital duty with much regularity. He had been fifteen years older than Bethel, and she thought maybe some harm had been done to him in his early years growing up in the humid and disease-riddled rice fields of the Carolina coast. Only once had he successfully made her skip a course, and she had lost the little one in the August heat of her first Mississippi summer before she even felt it quicken. Early on she had felt keenly this absence in her life, but when she was brought into the house – despite its lack of proper servants' quarters – to care for Miss Caroline's son, she had all but forgotten any wish she might have had to bear children of her own.

She had a child, just an overgrown little baby really, who needed her; who came to her with the hurts and outrages of his day, and ran first to her to boast of his triumphs. It was to Bethel he had come to confess when he had pried the back off his grandfather's watch and pulled out all the springs, and Bethel who had given him the courage to own up like a gentleman and take the consequences. It was Bethel, too, who had bathed his face and salved his pride after the resulting caning. Bethel had taught him how to take off his hat for a lady, and how to draw out a dining chair smoothly that she might sit. She had refined his father's lessons in etiquette and Southern courtesy with the lessons she had learned in the stately old house where she and Miss Charlotte had both been born – one above stairs and one below. It was Bethel who had packed his trunk when he went off to university, and Bethel who had unpacked it again when he came home to stay. He had been her master's son, and he was now her master himself, but though he owned her in law she knew she owned him too – and in a deeper and more natural way than any law of man could touch. She loved him with all of her heart, and she would always love him.

She carried the plates to the dish-dresser, her left hip grinding a little as she walked. Bethel liked to think that despite her age she was as spry and strong as ever, but sometimes she felt the years in her bones. She had long since stopped counting her birthdays, but she had certainly had a good many of them. She didn't mind the occasional twinge, but she worried about growing old. She was still as useful as she ever had been – more useful now, when every pair of hands had twice the work and many times the value they had had in prosperous times – but she feared the time when she could not carry her share. It was not a fear for her own future that drove this anxiety: she knew the family would take care of her to the end of her days whatever it cost them. But she was needed, so very badly needed, and she could not bear the thought that one day her body might leave her unable to fill that need for those she loved.

Mister Cullen was out there now, shoveling feed and pitching down hay for bedding the mules when he ought to be sitting in the parlor with his wife and enjoying the peace of the evening. He had spent the afternoon crouched in the dirt to hill the yams, instead of dandling his boy on his knee or listening to Missus Mary read out her letters from home or riding off to a neighbor's for a lazy day of hunting. Desperate to keep the plantation afloat, he was working himself harder than any field hand over at Hartwood, and if his collapse on Saturday wasn't proof of what it was doing to his health, Bethel didn't know what was.

She knew what he was doing was necessary, if they were all going to stay fed. He had to raise a fifty-acre crop out of the tobacco if he was going to pay the taxes and buy the winter's stores and put by a little for Mister Gabe's schooling. He had to help tend that tobacco with his own dear hands, because three people couldn't work fifty acres and there wasn't money to take on another man. He'd had to spend two weeks fighting one of the two moldboard plows and the thick spring mud to put in the corn, because Elijah was too old to drive a mule team anymore and they couldn't afford to buy the year's feed. He had to tend his own stock in the lamplight, because these days it seemed he couldn't look himself in the mirror unless he'd put in just the same long and backbreaking day as the two black men. He'd have to dig the potatoes and bring in the corn and haul wood for the stoves and turn his hand to a thousand other hard and menial tasks before the year was out. And he had to do all this while still discharging the duties of a master: keeping the family finances, planning the work for next year, going in to town when they needed what they could not produce, making arrangements to have the tobacco crop packed and shipped, travelling to New Orleans to sell it so he could be sure of getting the best possible price, and doing what he could to keep friendly with the neighbors. All of it was so vitally important, and he could not lay by any of it.

Still, it pained Bethel to see him wearing himself down like he was. He was thinner now than he'd been as a boy of eighteen, though his arms and back were packed with hard lean muscle from the ceaseless labor. He still walked with pride and held his head high as his mother had always done, and stood up to worthless rich whites like Sutcliffe even when he was tired and filthy and shamed, but his spine had been stooped for weeks from the ache of bending in the tobacco and his eyes were always shadowed with weariness. He didn't laugh as often as he used to, and though he was kind to his folks and sweet with Missus Mary it was obvious at least to Bethel's keen eyes that he was suffering. Just about the only time he looked young and carefree like he ought to was when he was playing with his son.

The worst of it was that she didn't think it was the work that was getting the better of him. He had never been afraid of hard work, and he did what had to be done without complaint. But she could see the worry in his eyes and the knot of care he bore at either corner of his mouth, poorly hidden by the beard she had never been able to talk him out of keeping. She thought that was what was hurting his spirit: the worry, and the constant helplessness of farming. His fretting about the rain was a perfect example. A man born to be a farmer, he might hope for rain and mourn it when it didn't come, but he didn't spend his days with an uneasy eye on the sky, watching every minute for a hint of a cloud. Mister Cullen had never been a one to accept there were things he couldn't change if he tried hard enough, and he would break himself slamming into a wall he couldn't move.

Bethel wiped the table and swept the floor, then went to the stove to stir the contents of the big boiling pot. Bones and vegetable scraps and three diced onions were brewing with a cheesecloth bag full of herbs, percolating into a broth for the mistress. Bethel didn't need to be told that Missus Mary had lost a baby. She could see it in her eyes: the haunted shock of a woman who had felt a life slip out of her very hands. It surfaced in quiet moments, when the girl's thoughts wandered from immediate questions of the day. It flickered behind her smile when she saw Mister Cullen. And as surely as Bethel knew that she knew that Missus Mary was keeping the secret to herself. If the doctor knew – and sometimes they didn't, white men that they were – he hadn't said anything either. Mister Cullen didn't know, and Bethel aimed to help keep it that way. Something like that, she feared, would be just about enough to shatter him, the strain he was under now.

The back step creaked and Bethel hurried to get the boot jack into place by the bench. She was back at the stove in a flash, so that he should not suspect she had been waiting for him. The broth was coming along nicely: she would be able to strain it in the morning and maybe take a cupful to the mistress before she got out of bed. Mister Cullen could have a taste with his breakfast, too. They hadn't had any beef on the place since before the last crop had started to fail: even soup would be a treat.

The door opened and Mister Cullen came in. He sat down at once to work at his boots, but though he moved stiffly he did not need to grab the table to steady himself. That was a salve to Bethel's worries: he wasn't lightheaded.

"There a spot of coffee lef'," she said as he flung his boots over the threshold and kicked the door closed with his toe, not troubling to stand. "You want to drink it?"

He looked up at her, and the fog of fatigue glistened bright across his eyes. He blinked slowly, which seemed to clear it, and he offered her a half-smile like a wilted daisy picked by small and eager hands. "That'd be nice, Bethel, thank you."

While she fetched a cup he dragged himself to his feet and went to wash his hands of the smell of the mules. As his left hand put the towel back on its rail, his right crept up so that his fingertips could press against his temple. His eyes closed briefly and he exhaled slowly through his nose. Watching from the corner of her eye, Bethel knew that his head was still plaguing him. Quickly she picked up the bottle of anodyne he had bought in town that morning. She removed the stopper with her thumb and tipped a fine sprinkling of powder into the cup. She put down the vial and went to the stove, pouring out the last of the coffee over the small hill of medicine and the faded petals of the forget-me-not painted in the bottom of the dainty china vessel.

"Might be bitter," she said, setting the mug on the table with a teaspoon beside it. "Been brewin' all day."

"It'd suit me if it was strong enough to stand a spoon in," Mister Cullen said. Instead of sitting down again he planted his fist on the tabletop and leaned forward over it. He poured a dollop of sorghum syrup into the dark fluid and stirred it vigorously. He raised the steaming vessel to his mouth and took a long swallow. He sighed contentedly. "It's perfect," he promised. He looked around the kitchen. "Sorry I can't sit a bit," he said. "Mary'll be wanting to read out her letters."

"You go on," Bethel told him earnestly. "Put up them tired feet. Jus' be sure you drink that all down, now: don' do to waste nothin'."

He raised his cup in a quick salute and disappeared through the dining room door.

_*discidium*_

Cullen was on his back in the damp grass, one leg stretched out straight and the other bent so that his knee grazed the edge of the wagon box. Eyes wide in the shade beneath it, he pulled slowly at one of the axle pins. Nate had helped him lever the rear end of the buckboard onto blocks before heading out to the yams, and Cullen had managed to drag off both wheels on his own. This was no mean feat, for the buckboard wheels weighed close to forty pounds each and they were so tightly fitted to the axle that it took a couple dozen blows with a heavy oak mallet to pound them on. Getting them off again after years of the rod marrying to the hub was not a task to be lightly undertaken. Cullen had raised a sweat and let loose several very choice words while wrestling with the right-hand wheel, and had finally resorted to bracing one foot against the wagon box and hauling with his whole weight. He had only just managed to regain his balance and get his foot out of the way when the wheel finally came free and crashed to earth. After that struggle he had found the left wheel much easier, and both were now canted on their sides beyond the toe of his outstretched boot.

He shifted his body to the left and grabbed hold of another pin. In anticipation of this work he had pared his nails before breakfast, but the third one was still ragged and it snagged, lifting from its bed with a sickening bright flash of pain that faded almost at once to an irritating sting. Cullen hissed and tried again to get a good grip on the stout peg.

He had slept heavily the night before, and awakened feeling parched and groggy but stronger than he had in days. Even the overworked muscles of his back had quieted their blustering, and lying now with his spine stretched he felt almost well again. His headache was gone at last, after plaguing him for the better part of four days, and its absence left him feeling remarkably cheerful. The morning shadows were still long and the whole day stretched before him, but it was not such a dreary prospect as many that had come before. He hoped to have the wagon put right by noon, and then he could take it down to the creek bottom and start felling timber. There was a heady catharsis to working an axe, and hard labor though it was it was at least labor in the shade, with a convenient and quick-running source of water nearby.

First, however, he had to get this pin loose. He grabbed again, and again his fingers slipped. They were slick, and he wiped them on the front of his shirt before making another attempt. The wood was smooth and weathered, and trying to get a firm grip was like trying to carry a half-pint of loose cornmeal in your teeth.

Cullen's memories of the previous evening were dim. He had joined Mary in the parlor, where she always went when she had letters from home. He had settled in his chair with his feet, as instructed, on the old tapestry footstool. Between the coffee and the thin homemade cigar he had expected to keep himself awake while his wife read, but her voice seemed to fade in and out as she ran through the news of her parents, her sisters, and the oldest Tate brother who was now taking a hand in the family's business interests in New York. Finally she had opened the letter from Maine, but she had scanned it silently with her eyes before offering the simple news that her other brother and her sister-in-law were well, and that their two boys were doing splendidly at school. Their daughter, who had just celebrated her seventh birthday, was also healthy and content, and that was all she had to offer him. There was undoubtedly more in the letter, for it was composed of two full sheets of good stationery, one covered on both sides, but whatever Jeremiah had to say to his sister Mary did not think it worth repeating. Still she had seemed uneasy as they went up to their room, and unusually quiet as she performed her evening toilette. Cullen, by then almost a sleepwalker, had simply shucked his clothes and tugged on his nightshirt and tumbled into bed without pressing her.

Now he wondered whether he ought to have said something. He didn't care what her meddlesome and censorious brother was up to, but if whatever it was truly bothered Mary he owed it to her to hear her complaints. He didn't like how their conversation had been left at supper, with something intangible and somehow horrific dangling between them. Maybe he was just too worn out to give her the attention she needed, but was that any sort of excuse? A good man ought to find time for his wife whatever his other responsibilities.

He tilted his head back in the grass, peering above him up the length of the wagon in the direction of the house. He could not see anything, of course, except dead grass under the box and green grass beyond, and the wagon-tongue bisecting the small stripe of sky. Apparently, however, all that was needed was to divert his eyes from his work for a moment, for his fingers found their hold at last and the pin came free. The axle shuddered and he slapped his hand up to steady it. His palm came down square across the place where the shaft had split, and a splinter drove into the pad of his hand. He snorted in irritation and moved his eyes back to his work. He tossed the pin after the others, and then placed his left hand more carefully. He retracted his right and looked at it. There was a dark globe of blood where the shard had slipped in, and he bit at it, digging with his teeth until he found the little piece of wood. He yanked it free with a scowl.

There was one pin left, but instead of trying to pull it immediately he took hold of the axle on either side of it and began to jimmy it. The pin creaked and the wagon-box rattled, and the split in the shaft shuddered and widened. Cautiously Cullen eased back on the supportive pressure of his arm, letting the weight of the beam fall on the pin. For a moment nothing happened, and then the peg gave way and the axle was loose. The muscles of his forearms stood out starkly as he resisted the inclination of the heavy beam to come crashing down across his ribs, and he lowered it slowly, shimmying out from under it as he let it fall in an arc that just cleared the crown of his head. He let go before his fingers could be crushed, and cringed reflexively at the clatter when the axle hit the ground.

Using his planted foot to propel himself, Cullen slid out from under the wagon and sat up. He wiped his hands on his trousers and looked again at his palm. There was still a shadow under his skin where a fragment of the splinter remained buried, but he was not going to be able to dig it out with his teeth. He'd have to have Mary try to hook it with a sewing needle when he returned to the house that evening. He got to his feet and went around to the side of the wagon, bending to grab the axle rod so that he could drag it out into the open.

The fissure was deeper than he had thought, sinking almost three-quarters of the way through the axle. They had been lucky that it hadn't snapped in two. The sudden loss of an axle from a loaded wagon could crack a supporting beam or break the tongue, to say nothing of the risk such a jolt posed to the team and the rider.

"Good to know I've got a bit of luck, anyway," Cullen muttered to himself, swinging the elevated end of the axle around and then letting it fall in the grass. It was good for nothing but kindling now.

He had a fresh axle waiting: the last time he had broken one he had ordered a spare in a fit of longsightedness, and now he was glad. He had neither time nor money to spare the wheelwright, and at least the cash he had laid out for this repair was already long spent and forgotten. Of course, he would have to invest in a replacement sometime, but with just a little more Providence he could delay that a while.

He slid the new shaft under the wagon directly underneath its point of attachment, and then moved to the other side to make sure it was squared. This was much easier to do now that it would be when he was under the cart again. He gathered the pins in his left hand, tossed them thoughtfully so that they clattered in his palm, and then shoved them into his trouser pocket. The mallet was sitting on its head in the grass, and he snagged it deftly by the handle. He sat down parallel to the left side of the wagon, and got his legs carefully around the block supporting the wheelless back end. Then he lay down, his hips twisted at an awkward angle, and planted the mallet just over his head where it would remain within easy reach when he got to where he needed to be. This part of the job was best achieved by three people: one to hold up either side of the axle and a third to do the undercarriage work, but he didn't have three people to spare. The problem had occupied his mind through a whole day of tobacco-topping last week, and he thought he knew how he could manage it alone.

Cullen lay down on his back with his knees still bent as high as the wagon-box allowed. He took a moment to center himself, bracing for the task ahead. Then with his left elbow bent high and his right arm reaching across his chest he grabbed hold of the axle rod and lifted it, careful not to let it wander too far from straight. Using his legs and his shoulder blades he lifted his body and shifted it a few inches to the left. Then he adjusted his hold further along the axle, lifted again, and hoisted himself again. In this way he was able to work down towards the middle of the wagon, until at last he reached the point where the axle rod was settled in its grove at his right, and could not be lifted any higher. Inhaling deeply in preparation for the strain, he reached as far as he could along the grounded side. Then, hoisting slowly but smoothly he lifted the other side of the heavy bar into place.

The axle wobbled and his arms strained. For a breath he thought he could hold it, and then it slipped. It would have come crashing down across his body with rib-snapping force, but his reflexes saved him. Before he could even think of a fix, his right knee came flying up towards his chest and his calf slid under the shaft. There was a dull crack of wood hitting bone as the weight fell against his shin, but his hands hastily shifted to steady the rocking axle while his leg bore the weight. Panting shallowly in the wake of narrowly-avoided calamity, Cullen lay very still for a moment or two in this contorted position. Then he lifted himself onto his left foot and his upper back, and moved a little to his left. He slid his knee until it rested just beside the hole bored for the first peg. His left hand kept the unbalanced left portion of the axle while his right gingerly released its hold. When he was certain that arm and leg could support the shaft he reached into his pocket and dug out a pin. He fitted it into its hole and then groped above and behind until his hand closed on the mallet. Pounding upward with the rebound coming straight for his chin was awkward and risky, but strangely exhilarating. He beat the peg tight and then put down the mallet and felt for another.

The second peg was the most difficult to place, because although he tried he could not quite keep the axel from shifting and so its hole was did not remain aligned with the hole in the carriage-beam. But the third was easier, and by the time he had finished with the fourth he was able to give his off-hand a rest and let his leg bear the load unaided. He pounded the remaining pins with vigor and then scooted down the breadth of the wagon giving each one a final ferocious tap. Finally he was able to get back out into the sunshine. He stretched his arms, massaging his aching left shoulder as he surveyed the neat placement of the axle rods in their grooves. Then he picked up the brackets and reattached them. With the axle snug in place and likely to stay that way, he went over to the shade of the stable and helped himself to a dipperful of water.

Next it was time to get the wheels back on. He tackled the right one first. Lifting it onto the tip of the rod was the easy part, but beating it down into place was another matter entirely. The fit between the hub and the axle had to be as snug as possible while still allowing the wheel to turn freely, or the jolting of the wagon would snap the axle over the first good bump. With the weight of the wheel dragging down on the rod, it took some awkward maneuvering and a great deal of pounding to get it settled. At last it was, however, and Cullen fixed the hub pin and gave it an experimental spin. It whirled almost silently and with no discernable wobble. Satisfied, he went to retrieve the other wheel. It was lying dish-down in the grass, and as he bent to lift it onto its rim he hesitated. His fingers moved to the center of the hub, brushing at what he fervently hoped was a stray blade of grass made to look dark by the glare of the sun in his eyes. But his fingertip snagged deeply on a fissure in the wood.

"_Shit!_" he snarled, straightening up and kicking the wheel with the side of his foot. The iron tire sent a jolt into his great toe, but in his frustration he could not feel it. No wonder the left wheel had been easier to remove than the right. When the axel had broken, it had cracked the hub of the wheel.

He crouched down to make a closer inspection. The largest fracture, the one he had noticed, was about half an inch deep and sank well into the heart of the hub. There were several smaller cracks too, spread like the rays of a sunburst from the center hole. The iron brace was still intact, but if he tried to haul lumber on a compromised hub it wouldn't stay that way. Sooner or later, quite likely sooner, the hub would fail and the wheel would collapse. That was a guaranteed broken axle at best. At worst, a demolished wagon and a lead mule with a broken shoulder – which would quickly turn into a dead mule, for what was there to do then but shoot it? Trying to make do with a bad wheel was a false economy of the worst kind.

Resignedly Cullen collected his tools and tossed them into the bed of the wagon. He checked to be sure the blocks were still straight, and then righted the broken wheel. Guiding it with his fingertips like a child with a hoop and stick, he rolled it along beside him and around to the stable door. It stood closed, for when the stock was in the paddock the back door was left open so that they could wander in to graze at their feed or drink at the trough when they wished to. He let the wheel lean against his leg while he opened the door, and then rolled it inside. He opened the low buggy door and lifted the wheel up into it, sitting on the floor with the hub against the leather seat. It looked perfectly ridiculous, but with his wagon on the blocks he had only the one other vehicle. He studied the spectacle for a minute or two while he turned the matter over in his mind. Then he left the stable and went up to the house.


	11. West Willows Plantation

**Chapter Eleven: West Willows Plantation**

The kitchen was empty when Cullen came in. He scraped his boots, but did not trouble to take them off. Hurriedly he washed his hands and face, and wiped the sweat from behind his ears and the back of his neck with a corner of the towel. The dining room door stood ajar, and he passed through to the corridor. He glanced into the parlor and then went to the foot of the stairs, crossing his arms to lean against the newel post. "Mary?" he called.

There were footsteps above, and she appeared at the top of the stairs, a bundle of sheets in her arms and a question in her eyes. Clearly she had not been expecting him back so soon.

"What are you doing with those?" he asked. "You ain't meant to be making the beds."

"I'm not," she said, coming down and stopping at the third step where she had half a head on his height. "Bethel's stripping them down and I was just about to take these outside. It's washday: you know that."

"So it is," Cullen said. He had lost track of the household chores, now that he spent so much of his time in the fields. "Listen, I got to go out to West Willows. If Nate and Elijah finish up with the sweet potatoes before I'm back, send 'em out to mow the clover."

"I thought Meg was taking care of that," said Mary.

He shook his head. "I got her watering the peas," he said. He looked around. "Where's our boy?"

Mary shifted her bundle to one arm and brushed at a flyaway lock of hair. "Up with Bethel. Probably trying to burrow under his tick. Why have you got Meg watering the garden? I said that I would."

"You got enough to do. It's washday." Cullen did not like the idea of Mary wringing out clothes or wrestling with wet sheets either, when she had admitted herself that she was still in pain, but at least under Bethel's watchful eyes she was not likely to stretch herself too far. "I may be back straight away, but if he thinks he can get it taken care of quickly I might just wait. I'd like to finish up today if I possibly can."

"What is it you need?" asked Mary.

"We've got a wheel with a cracked hub," he told her, not quite able to keep the weary irritation from his voice. "Might've known it was too good to be true when I got the axle changed without more than a splinter."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to see the wheelwright?" she queried. "I can't really see Boyd Ainsley mending anything."

"It's six miles in to see the wheelwright, and six miles back," said Cullen. "West Willows is just down the road a piece, and they've got a darkie cooper who should be able to take care of it. Besides," he added, chafing his hand against his beard; "I might be able to strike a bargain with Boyd."

Mary nodded. "Are you going to change your clothes?" she asked, reaching to straighten his skewed collar.

Cullen's hand closed on the front of his shirt, already damp with sweat. He was cleaner than usual for this time of the morning, but he was far from pristine. "Hadn't planned to," he said. "It's only Boyd. He won't mind."

"And Verbena and the children," said Mary. "And they may have visitors. I'm not saying you ought to dress your best, but you might put on something fresh."

"No time," he said dismissively. "If I'm lucky I might be able to get back here with a wheel for that wagon while there's still a few hours of daylight. I wanted to start in the corn tomorrow, but that means bringing up a load of timber from the creek bottom today."

"If you really think you might be over there for hours, you ought to take Lottie," said Mary. "She has friends at West Willows and I worry about her spending so much time working. She ought to have a rest; she's been so good with Gabe while I've been ill."

Cullen stopped short of reminding her that anyone of Lottie's age at the Ainsley plantation would have work of their own to tend to. There were at least a couple of children there of eight or nine, and Lottie was friendly with them. It wouldn't hurt to invite her to tag along. "All right: I'll see if she wants to. It might be a short trip, if Boyd can't get it seen to straight away. If his man can't do it at all, I'll have to go straight into Meridian. That wheel has to be mended. Or replaced," he added grimly, trying to remember what he had paid the last time a wheel had needed replacing. He could not recall, which meant it must have been in the days when money was plentiful.

"She wouldn't mind a trip into town, either," said Mary. "Go and ask her."

He nodded and reached up for the bundle of sheets. "I might as well take those, since I'll be passing that way. Could you do me a favor and get the money out of the desk. Just in case."

"Yes, of course," said Mary. She smiled for him and turned to go back up the stairs to fetch the keys from their bedroom.

Cullen went out through the kitchen, crossing the dooryard with long strides. On the grassy stretch near the twin clotheslines, the great copper wash-kettle with its three stout spider legs was heating over a fire. He tipped the sheets into the water and punched them down with the paddle. Instead of going around to the gate he climbed the rail fence and went down to the edge of the vegetable patch. Lottie was down near the far end, arms weighed down with one of the heavy watering cans as she swung it to and fro along the base of the row of peas. Cullen called to her, but she did not seem to hear him. He whistled sharply, and her head snapped up alertly. She looked first towards the well, where he now saw Meg was drawing water to fill the other two cans. Then she saw him and came swiftly running, bare feet scarcely skimming the soft earth.

"Missus Bohannon need me t' help with Mist' Gabe?" she asked as she skidded to a stop before him. Her bonnet was hanging down her back by the strings, and there was a smudge of dirt on her nose. Cullen shook his head.

"I've got business over at West Willows Plantation. I might only be there twenty minutes, I might be there a few of hours," he said. "If you want to come along you're welcome."

Her face lit up eagerly, and then she schooled her features into a dignified frown. "Ain't I needed 'round here, Massa?" she asked. "They's an awful lot needs doin'."

"Mrs. Bohannon and Bethel can spare you," said Cullen. "If your ma's got no objection."

"I'll ask her," said Lottie. She looked down at the fraying hem of her faded work dress. "I gots to change if I'm goin' visiting, an' wash my hands."

"That's fine," said Cullen; "but be quick. Soon as I hitch up the buggy I'm leaving, with or without you."

"Yassir," said Lottie, bobbing her head in solemn understanding. "Thankee, sir."

"Go run and ask your ma," Cullen said. "I'll meet you down in front of the stables."

Released by his dismissal, Lottie wheeled on her toes and bolted, fleet as a fawn, down the hill towards her mother. Brief words were exchanged, and Meg nodded. Then Lottie tore away towards the willows. Cullen watched her for a moment, then scaled the fence tiredly and started back up to the house. He bent unexpectedly into a detour and went to the woodpile. He gathered an armload of logs and moved it down by the laundry pot.

Mary was waiting for him in the dining room. The pocketbook was on the table, and Cullen scooped it up and rammed it deep into his trouser pocket. "Thank you," he said. "Looks like Lottie wants to come along. You don't need her help with the washing?"

"Bethel and I will manage beautifully," said Mary. "It ought to dry quickly in this heat, too. How long do you suppose this weather will hold? It's been a week now."

"Can't possibly be much longer," Cullen said. There was a bead of perspiration rolling down towards the corner of his eye, and he dabbed it with his cuff.

"Here," Mary said, handing him a fresh handkerchief with one hand. In the other, he noticed now, she was holding a neatly folded shirt, coarse but clean, and his old gabardine waistcoat. "I know Boyd won't expect your church clothes," she said. "But you might as well be decently dressed."

He offered a small, thankful smile and thumbed off his suspenders. As he undid the row of buttons his lips tightened. He slipped the garment off and smoothed his undershirt, then pulled on the fresh one. As he settled it on his shoulders each hand closed just below the collar. "Mary?" he said, his voice low. "Are you ashamed of me?"

"Ashamed?" she cried, horrified. "Whatever do you mean?"

"Because I work. Because I'm working in the fields like a…" He could not finish.

"Like a slave?" Mary asked. There was a note of challenge in her voice.

"It ain't the kind of life I promised you," he said hastily. "I ain't the kind of husband you expected. A lot of women 'round here would sooner die than be married to a man out grubbing in the tobacco and hoeing the corn."

Mary made a small, unsteady sound deep in her throat. "Cullen, look at me. _Look _at me."

Slowly he raised his eyes, unsure of what to expect. The mournful look in her eyes was worse than any censure he might have expected.

"I am not ashamed," she said, very firmly and clearly. "I know you work hard, just as hard as Nate and much harder than Elijah can anymore. And I know we never would have managed even to meet our obligations last year if you hadn't. You're doing what needs to be done, and there's no shame in that. I don't care what other women would think. I'm proud to have a husband who's not afraid to work. That's what props up this whole rotten system: people who are scared to dirty their hands providing for their own folk."

She reached out and took hold of his right hand, running her fingers along the thick callouses. Then she turned it over and raised it up so that she could bow her head to kiss his palm. "I'm not ashamed," she repeated. Her eyes fell on the shadow of the splinter deep in the little raw cut. "Oh!" She stiffened, and then turned as if to run away from him. "I ought to dig that out: just let me fetch my sewing box."

He caught hold of her arm before she could slip away, and closed the distance between them. His arm snaked around her whaleboned waist and he drew her to him, kissing her hungrily and full on the mouth. She gasped a little: a small and sharp intake of air. Then all at once she was reciprocating the kiss, one hand slipping up to stroke the damp hair at the nape of his neck. He could feel her heart hammering through her stays and he held her closer, careless of her neat workdress against his sweat-fouled undershirt, forgetful of the broken wheel and the too-thin pocketbook now pressed to his hip by hers. She smelled of lilac and the sweet scent of their child. A longing seized him to sweep her up the stairs and into their bedroom, to unbutton her basque and unlace her petticoats, to unhook the busk of her corset and lift her onto the bare feather mattress and…

But Doc Whitehead had warned him of this; had told him she wasn't strong enough yet, that it might be dangerous even to try. His body tightened against hers, and his arm slipped from her waist onto the pleats of her skirt. His mouth closed, though her lips still quested against his. Somehow his hand found her wrist and he pulled their two arms between them as he took a half-step back.

"I got to go," he said quietly, pressing his fingertip to her lips as she tried to find his mouth again. In that instant when the dreamy bliss faded from her eyes it left only bewilderment, but the lapse did not endure. She schooled her expression and tucked away her heart safe between the layers of necessity.

"Yes, of course," she said. "Of course you must."

Her hands went to his throat, and for a moment he feared she would draw him back into an embrace – feared it, because he did not think that he had the strength of will to resist his yearning a second time. But her fingers closed on the halves of his shirtfront and deftly fastened the long row of buttons. She picked up his waistcoat where it had fallen at their feet, and shook it out, brushing at a smudge of dust from his boot. Then she held it out so that he could slip his arms into it. Cullen hurriedly tucked in his shirttails and did up the front of the vest.

"How d'I look?" he asked, raking his hand through his hair.

"Very respectable, like a man who makes his own way in the world should," said Mary. "Where's your hat?"

"Out by the wagon," said Cullen. He looked at her, heart still thudding headily against his ribs. "You're a good woman, Mary."

She blushed prettily and waved him off. "Go on," she said. "You're wasting daylight."

_*discidium*_

He had just put Pike in the traces when Lottie came running, swinging one-armed around the doorpost of the stable to slow herself.

"I thought mebbe you'd gone, Massa," she panted. "I didn' mean to take so long, but I couldn't get the buttons done up right."

She twirled around so that he could see the fastenings up the back of her dress. Like her other one it was cheap calico, but it was neither so worn nor so faded. The fabric was a pale blue with small figures printed on it in a darker shade: either leaves or feathers, Cullen did not know which. The buttons were of wood painted blue, and several were chipping. Lottie had missed the buttonhole in the very middle of her back, and the top button was without a mate. For a moment he considered sending her to her mother or to Bethel to straighten out the confusion: certainly that would have been the proper thing to do. But he was in a hurry and he could not let the child go off the place as she was.

"Here," he said. He unbuttoned one at a time, fastening it into the proper hole before adjusting the next one, and worked his way up to the back of her neck. Lottie stood patiently, drawing with her great toe in the dirt of the barn floor. Cullen finished and clapped her on the shoulder. "Much better. Climb up and let's get on."

He stepped up and slid onto the driver's board, and Lottie clambered to sit beside him. She held tight to the rail with one hand, sitting very straight and fairly glowing with excitement. Cullen slapped the reigns, and the Morgans guided the buggy out into the sunshine. Almost without prompting they turned down towards the lane. Cullen waited until they were off the property, and then slackened the lines so that the horses quickened to a trot. Lottie swayed, and he glanced at her.

"Put your foot up on the other board there," he suggested.

She did so, and grinned. "They sure do go fas'," she said in awe. "I 'spects they's the fastest horses in the county."

"I don't know 'bout that," Cullen said; "but they're certainly some of the best. You want 'em to go faster?"

She nodded with a shiver of anticipation and braced herself. Cullen eased out a little further, and Bonnie took up the slack at once. She tossed her head so her dark mane flew, and patient Pike hurried on beside her. Lottie's eyes were shining and her breath came quick and shallow as she revelled in their speed. She was such a help around the plantation, and so patient and responsible with Gabe, that it was easy to forget that she was just a child herself. Cullen let out the reins a little more, but when the knuckles of her gripping hand began to discolour with the force of her hold he slowed a bit.

The ride was a short one, for the Ainsley plantation was really just down the road. The land itself was separated from the Bohannon holdings only by a thin stand of creek-bottom scrub that belonged to the butcher in Meridian. He only kept it for timber, and visited only when his woodpiles needed replenishing. But the lane to the house was near the other end of the property, and it was for the lane that Cullen was headed. He slowed the Morgans to a walk and took the sweeping turn with ease, the buggy bouncing cheerfully. The path was lined in drooping willow trees transplanted as saplings from the woods on the far side of the plantation. They were enormous now, and cast their broad bowers of shade close by the carefully raked track that coiled into a sinuous curl before breaking out into the broad lawn before the house.

The West Willows plantation house had finished construction about ten years before, and the old house – built at around the same time as the Bohannon home and in the same style – had been given over to the head overseer. The new building was a splendid neoclassical confection with vaulted windows and towering two-story white columns bearing up an elegantly shallow roof. Inside it was laid out for entertaining, with a vast dining room and two elegant parlours, a drawing room, and a room that had been meant to house a library but was used instead chiefly for housing Boyd Ainsley's extensive collection of unusual artefacts. Boyd had a habit of buying up curiosities and exotic statuary on his many trips to the major cities of the south, and his semi-annual visits to New York, Boston and Baltimore. He had acquired his taste for the unusual on his Grand Tour of Europe, and had pursued it to Morocco, Egypt and India as well before his father's illness had brought him home to attend to the family interests. Old Mr. Ainsley had suffered a series of strokes that had left him more or less a permanent presence in the back parlor, and poorly equipped to manage the plantation.

As the buggy drew up to the end of the drive, a rangy Negro boy of about sixteen came running from around the side of the house, hurriedly pulling on a rumpled jacket. Cullen hopped down and handed him the reins, but the boy paused at the sight of the wagon wheel.

"Take it 'round back," Cullen instructed. "I need to speak to your master about getting it mended."

"Yassir," the boy said. He looked Cullen over thoughtfully. "Should I tell him you're here, sir? Who should I say?"

"No, thank you," said Cullen. "I can see myself in." He turned to Lottie, who was just scrambling down out of the buggy. "You run along and say hello," he told her. "But don't bother folks who's working."

"Yes, Massa," she said. "Thankee." Then, in a flurry of bare feet and calico she was gone.

The carriage-boy was still looking uncertainly at the visitor, and when Culllen strode over to mount the broad front steps he opened his mouth as if to speak, but did not quite dare to do it. Cullen marched over to the broad doors with the bright stained-glass roses set in the windows. He raised his hand to knock, and then decided not to. He seized the brass door-handle and walked into the high-ceilinged entryway. His work boots sounded hollowly on the parquet floor, and from a side door a small old man in a smart black livery came hurrying. He had a startled, affronted look upon his face which changed to an expression of resigned comprehension when he recognized the intruder.

"Morning, Mist' Bohannon," he said with a stiff little bow. "Come to see Massa Boyd, I s'pose."

"That's right, Matthew" said Cullen. "He'll be in the library?"

"Nawsir," said the valet. "He in the back parlor with Miss Verbena. I kin go fetch 'im out to see you."

"That's all right: I'll go in," said Cullen. He crossed the chamber and rounded the foot of the splendidly carpeted staircase towards parlor.

"But they's folks in with 'em…" Matthew protested feebly, but Cullen was already over the threshold and it was too late.

Mr. Ainsley occupied his usual corner between one splendid window and the marble fireplace. Verbena, pale and lovely in a lavender frock, sat in her rocking chair with her broad skirts billowing over her hoops. And on the horsehair sofa sat the two Trussell sisters: Greta, a verified old maid at twenty-six, and Paulina, who at twenty-two was betrothed to a planter from Jackson. On the ottoman by the armchair sat Charity Ainsley, Boyd's oldest girl. She had a piece of fancywork in her lap, but she did not seem to be doing much sewing. She was listening avidly to something her mother was saying, but Verbena was cut off mid-word as Cullen came in.

Only once he was over the threshold did he see Boyd, leaning against the wall near an alcove housing a lusciously thriving rubber plant with a cigar clamped between his teeth. The ladies were all staring at the newcomer now, and he smiled politely and executed a tidy bow. "Good morning, Miss Verbena. Ladies," he said courteously. "Good morning, Miss Charity." He turned to his friend. "I wanted a word, Boyd, if your charming guests can spare you. It's business."

Greta blushed furiously and rather unattractively, trying to hide it with her ivory fan. Paulina managed a steady smile, and Verbena put on her very best blandly cheerful hostess expression. Charity, however, was frankly staring as though some new and exotic beast had just walked into the room under the guise of an old family friend.

"Ladies? Would you excuse us?" Boyd asked. He was taller than Cullen, but rail-thin and frail of bone. As a boy he had suffered from what Bethel called _a misery on the chest_, and it had held him back in his growth. He wore a crisp cream-colored linen suit, the lapels of which were dusted with flakes of ash from his cigar.

"Of course," said Verbena sweetly. "Do be sure to offer Mr. Bohannon a drink."

Greta's fan fluttered, and Paulina said something inanely polite, but it was lost on Cullen's ears as he followed the host back into the foyer and away from the eyes of the ladies. "What sort of business?" Boyd asked quietly when they were safely out of sight. "Good God, Cullen, what are you wearing?"

"And after I put on a clean shirt just for you!" Cullen said with mock indignation. He knew that his friend was referring more to the heavy boots, creased and discolored, and dusty, and his trousers with the grass-stains on the seat. "Look, I wondered whether you could have your cooper – what's his name?"

"Mark," said Boyd.

"—whether you could have Mark take a look at a wheel I brought along. I'm hoping he can fix it: I need my wagon this afternoon, and it's lame." Cullen scratched the back of his neck. "I know he only does wheels as a sideline, but if there's any way he could manage a quick mending I'd be grateful."

"I'll have him take a look," Boyd agreed affably. "He's been making casks for sale the last couple weeks. There really isn't enough work for him on the place."

Matthew came from the direction of the kitchen bearing a tray on which sat four glasses of lemonade and two silver cups. He pivoted smoothly to approach the men as if he had not intended to go straight through to the parlor. He offered his load, and Boyd took one of the goblets, carefully gripping only the rim. Below his fingertips a fine frost was forming on the thin wall of the cup. He gestured that Cullen should help himself, and he picked up the second. It was a mint julep, pale and sweet-smelling and floating with thick chips of ice. Cullen would have preferred the liquor neat, but he took a long swallow regardless. The drink was deliciously chilled, and he sucked in a small splinter of ice to melt against the roof of his mouth. Suddenly he changed his mind about the straight bourbon. A cold drink – truly and deeply cold, not merely the gentle cool of summer well-water – was something he had not had since February. The poor man got his ice in the winter; the rich man had it shipped packed in sawdust from New Hampshire to linger in the ice-house through the summer.

Matthew moved off to bring the ladies their drinks, and Boyd gestured with the three free fingers of his right hand. "Now tell me why you don't just take it into Meridian."

"I'm in a hurry," said Cullen. "I meant to haul firewood this afternoon: I need to lay up a good supply to dry, and for that I need the wagon."

Boyd grimaced almost painfully. "I forgot you only got the one wagon," he said.

Cullen grinned. "You know me: never one to hedge his bets." He swirled the cup so that the ice sang against the side. "The wheel's in my buggy."

Matthew was coming back with the empty tray, and Boyd crooked a finger. "Go and have Pip take the wagon wheel out of Mr. Bohannon's buggy down to Mark. Tell him I want it repaired right away."

The slave nodded and hurried off. Cullen took another long, savoring sip of his drink. "Thank you," he said.

"Happy to do it." Boyd nodded to the nearest archway. "Come through and sit down."

Cullen followed his friend into the cool and faintly spicy-smelling room with the tall dark-stained shelves built into its walls. He did not trouble to look at the clutter of small statuary, ancient coins and battered bronze jewelry on sloping trays, stone arrowheads and scraps of mosaic tile. He went instead to one of the chairs by the heavily-draped windows and settled in it, planting the elbow of the arm that held his julep on the armrest. Boyd settled near him, crossing his legs in their smoothly-pressed trousers.

"I heard you spat on Abel Sutcliff," he said.

Before he could restrain them, Cullen's eyes rolled heavenwards. "Is that what he's telling everyone?" he asked. "Doc Whitehead heard the same thing." He did not bestir himself to correct the story this time. He could not say quite why.

"I think he's saving that for special cases," said Boyd. "I guess you know what it is that he _is_ telling everyone."

"At least that's the truth," said Cullen. "No sense in keeping it hidden."

"The Trussell girls are certainly scandalized," Boyd remarked. "I'll bet they're mighty uncomfortable just about now: they had only just got through talking about it when you walked in. Heaven only knows what Verbena's thinking."

"I would've thought she'd have guessed by now." Cullen took hold of the base of his cup and adjusted his light hold on the rim. The frost was beading into droplets now, and he took another swallow. "Listen, about this wheel. I wondered whether we might do something by way of a trade for your man's services. Whatever you think might be fair."

Boyd considered this. "What do you suggest?" he asked. "I mean, what do you have that you suppose I might want?"

The bluntness of this question surprised Cullen. The other man had always had more of a roundabout way of broaching uncomfortable truths. Now that he said it, however, Cullen saw his point. He didn't have much to offer, and what he did was common. He might offer a cord of wood, but Boyd had slaves to cut his own timber. He might offer something from the vegetable patch, but the kitchen garden at West Willows occupied pretty near five acres of land. The loan of a mule team was meaningless to a man who owned half a dozen. He might have offered peaches, because by a curious fortune his mother had had a particular affinity for the fruit and his father had brought in saplings of a quality not ordinarily seen in Lauderdale County to supply her, but he had no idea how many dozens of peaches it would take to make fair recompense for the mending or replacement of a wheel. He scrubbed at his beard with the palm of his hand.

"You got me there," he admitted. "I'd be willing to do just about anything that's reasonably within my power, but I can't think of a single thing you might want."

Boyd smiled. He had always possessed a rather peculiar, thoughtful smile that had not served him well at all during his days of courting the various county belles. Girls in these parts didn't take to a man who seemed to do most of his thinking where they couldn't see it: they were used to the gallantly boasting types, or silly shallow young men. Even Cullen's careless disregard for convention was more desirable than Boyd's enigmatic reticence. To this day Cullen rather suspected that Verbena's choice of husband had been driven more by fortune than temperament, but she was a perfect Southern wife and Boyd thought he was happily married. It was not Cullen's place to disabuse his friend.

"Well, you could always work it off," he said. The curl of his lip suggested perhaps he was teasing, but there was no spark of mischief in his eyes. "I'm always in need of a good cotton hand. Can you pick a bole?"

"Better than you could," Cullen said with a note of acerbity in his voice.

Boyd laughed. "All right, that's fair," he said. "You could always offer to give me a hogshead of tobacco when the time comes."

"That seems like a mighty high price for one wheel," said Cullen.

His friend's thin shoulder shrugged. "Call it payment with interest. You won't have it ready 'til fall."

Cullen found his patience with this game was wearing thin. He knocked back the last of the julep, a thick and syrupy mouthful with more sugar than bourbon, and set the glass down on the little pedestal table between them. "What do you really want, Boyd?"

"Were you planning to write back and accept our invitation?" asked the other man, frank at last.

"Invitation?" Cullen was honestly flummoxed. He dimly remembered a letter brought by the house a couple of weeks ago by one of the West Willows footmen, but he had been much too busy to pay mind to it.

"To our little féte on the first. Supper with a dance to follow? Me and Verbena are celebrating ten years with our oars cast in together, remember?" There was a playful note to Boyd's words now, but it was hiding a tang of irritation.

"Aw, hell, I forgot," Cullen said, earnestly apologetic. "No, Boyd, you know I can't come to that. It'd mean losing a whole day's work, and anyway I'd only embarrass you."

"Why?" asked Boyd. "You know how to behave in company."

"It ain't that. If everybody don't know already about what I been doing, they'll definitely know by then. It'll be uncomfortable for everybody," he argued. "And I really can't spare a whole day; there's too much work for the people I got already."

"I guess it comes down to whether your time for a day is worth more than the cash price to mend a wagon wheel at a rush," said Boyd. "Wheelwright down in Meridian might charge ten dollars to have you jump to the head of the queue. You got ten dollars to give me?"

Cullen was stung. It was a hard thing to admit that he did have the money, and even had it on him, but that if he squandered it on mending one wagon wheel he would be hard-pressed to keep meat on the table until November. Harder still because if he did say that Boyd might try to retract his demand for payment entirely, and there would be an argument out of which Cullen could not possibly come with much dignity. He was floundering in search of a reply when there came a quiet knock at the open door.

Matthew was on the threshold. "Beg pardon, Massa Boyd," he said. "Mist' Bohannon, Mark say that wheel pas' mendin'. He goin' have to make 'her fresh. He got spokes the right size all ready: say it take two-three hours to put her all together."

It was quicker than Cullen might have hoped, and would get him home by early afternoon, but it was also a more valuable service. He nodded and thanked Matthew, because there was nothing else he could have done, and the black valet bowed and disappeared.

"Well, now," said Boyd when it was certain the slave was gone. "What d'you think the wheelwright in town would charge for making up a whole new one in two or three hours?"

Cullen shot a cold look at his friend. "It ain't just the awkwardness," he said. "I can't speak for Mary, and I won't have her going where she don't want to go or doing what she don't want to do just to settle my debts. You can have me if you want, and I'll lose a day's work, but I won't promise Mary."

"That seems fair," said Boyd. "Though it seems to me she'd not be much of a wife if she let you brave the lion's den alone."

"They're my lions," said Cullen. "I brung her down here; she didn' ask to take up with these people. You know them other matrons always treat her sort of cool because she's a Northern lady. Even Verbena ain't much more than polite."

"'Bena's silly that way," Boyd admitted. "Thinks all Yankees are about two steps from turning murderous abolitionist. She lives in terror that one night they'll show up and drag us out of our beds and behead us in the dooryard."

"Mary can't even kill a chicken," said Cullen fondly, and then immediately wished he had not. He had forgotten for a moment that his wife's household duties extended rather more broadly than those of the other county ladies. "I'll come," he said, forcing the conversation back to the issue at hand. "But if Mary don't want to I'll be coming singly."

"Just be sure and send word one way or the other," said Boyd. "Verbena couldn't cope with having an unbalanced table: if Mary ain't coming she'll need to find someone to make up the number."

Cullen shook his head. "I can't spare anyone to send word by," he said. "No one but my girl, and she's too young to be off the place unattended."

"I'll send someone 'round on Friday," said Boyd. He finished his drink and wiped his damp fingertips with a fine cambric handkerchief. "I find it interesting, Cullen. You won't promise me Mary'll come, but you don't say she won't, either."

"Like I said," Cullen told him; "I won't speak for her."

After that they fell to talking about trivial things: politics and county news, the highlights of Boyd's latest trip to Savannah, and how his investments were faring. Boyd had been having difficulty with a couple of ornery field hands, and talked at great length about the inconvenience of dealing with insubordinate slaves while Cullen listened quietly. They shared stories of their sons' achievements and antics, and just seemed to be running short of things to say when Boyd proposed they might go out to see his new hunter. Cullen, who despite his frustration over the lost morning had been enjoying his leisure immensely, readily agreed.

It was coming on to noon, and the plantation sweltered quietly in the balmy heat. Two turkeys chased each other around the dooryard, pursued by a hapless little boy flapping a bit of rag whenever they wandered too near the flowerbeds. From off to the west came the shouts of the overseer giving instructions to the darkies working the cotton. Boyd, so restrained in stance and motion within the house, strode with imperious purpose past the two stable hands who were busy mixing feed in one of the huge bins and down towards the neat whitewashed stalls that housed his pleasure horses.

Someone had unhitched Pike and Bonnie from the buggy and brought them in out of the sun. At Cullen's approach they nickered happily, raising their heads from nosebags filled with a mixture richer in oats that that they got at home. Cullen stroked each of them fondly and murmured his greetings, then followed Boyd to the last and largest stall in which a massive Thoroughbred was stirring restlessly.

"He's a beauty," Cullen said, eyeing the glossy flank and the strong withers. "Must be a fine jumper."

"The very best," said Boyd proudly. From his pocket he produced a lump of sugar, holding it out on an upstretched palm for the horse to nibble up. "He's calm as a standing pool in the field, too. Don't let the dogs spook him at all. It's a shame you sold Valiant: we've got a hunt over on the Trussell land on Saturday."

"I could ride Pike in a hunt," said Cullen; "but I can't waste another weekday gallivantin' with the county wastrels. I got work to do, remember? It'll be enough of a burden on my people having me off the place on the first for your damned party."

"That again?" asked Boyd. "Look, if it's such a sore spot—"

"I'll do it," said Cullen irritably. "I just don't understand why you'd even want me to."

"Isn't it obvious?" said the other man. "You're good fun at parties. You don't let anything fool thing that anybody says just pass. You say those exquisitely polite but incredibly shocking things to the old women. And when you get a bit drunk you're a mighty fine dancer. I'd be bored out of my mind without you there."

Cullen chuckled and was about to say something when a shriek sounded off in the distance. It was followed by another, and then by a chorus of high voices clamoring and chanting and laughing - not at all kindly. The two men looked at one another and then towards the stable door.

"Trouble in the quarters?" asked Cullen.

Boyd shook his head bewilderedly. "Maybe a couple of the women?" he asked. "Either that or the kids."

Cullen flinched. "Shit. It probably is the kids. I brought our Lottie with me: you don't suppose she might be scrapping with one of yours?"

"Over what?" asked Boyd.

For a moment they looked at one another, each thinking the matter through swiftly. Then Cullen started off on long strides for the door, and Boyd hastened after him.


	12. Breach of the Peace

**Chapter Twelve: Breach of the Peace**

The West Willows slave quarters ran along a dusty avenue that intersected midway down a northward rise with the workshops and assorted outbuildings common on a large plantation. The cabins were unremarkable: small, with bare weathered walls and roofs patched with tarpaper. Narrow glassless windows stood with shutters gaping to catch any stray breeze, and the doors on their leather hinges hung wide. Between the cabins were strung drooping clotheslines heavy with faded frocks and work-shirts. Apparently Tuesday was washday here as well.

Most of the adult slaves were abroad at their work, but in one doorway a wizened and toothless old woman sat. Two babies, one just new and the other surely close to six months, slumbered on a bit of quilt beside her. She looked up as her master passed, but neither bestirred herself herself to rise nor offered any greeting. Cullen, hurrying after the noise of the throng, scarcely glanced at her.

The sound was coming from behind the row of cabins, and they had to push through the burden of a clothesline to cut the quickest path. Boyd hesitated distastefully but Cullen did not, shoving aside a ragged towel and a petticoat from which lace trimming had been cut before passing it down to a slave. He emerged onto a packed-dirt yard crowded with sawn-down barrels, wooden buckets, spades and rakes and twig brooms. The henhouse stood on one side of the little square, and its residents were in an uproar. They had been disturbed by the shouting of the children: about a dozen of them, ranging in age from not much older than Gabe to not much younger than Lottie, gathered in a clamoring circle around two dark bodies grappling in the dust.

One of them was Lottie, her pigtails jouncing wildly and her nimble fingers scrabbling as she tried to throw of her opponent. She was pinned under a boy, surely no older than she but broad and husky, who had her by each shoulder. She kicked, striking him in a particularly sensitive area of the body, and he began to lift her and to slam her head against the earth. Her nose was bleeding and she was shouting a string of garbled invectives that Cullen was amazed to discover she even knew. The boy, intent on his business, was breathlessly silent. The onlookers cheered and jeered, and one or two of the smaller ones were crying.

"Stop it!" cried Boyd thinly. "Stop it, I say, or I'll sell you all off to Georgia!"

The children took no notice, and the two combatants did not even seem to have heard. Cullen steered one rabid-looking six-year-old out of his way with a firm hand to the crown of the head, and stepped around a squatting little girl. He marched straight into the fray, seized the boy by the ear, and hauled him up off of Lottie.

The boy began wailing at once, thrashing and trying to strike out at Cullen. With a sure hand, the man reached out and gripped the child's chin with thumb and forefinger, turning his head firmly but not cruelly so that the boy could not help but look at him. Seeing a stranger – and a white stranger, at that - he fell suddenly silent, eyes round as millstones. Satisfied, Cullen released his hold. The boy tried to bolt, but Boyd stepped into his path and he froze, smitten with dismay at being caught out by the master himself.

Cullen moved to kneel beside Lottie, but all of a sudden she was up on her feet, dancing to and fro like a pugilist. "Come back 'n finish what you started!" she shouted. "You git back here right now!"

"Lottie!" Cullen said sternly.

She glanced at him, and exclaimed; "Massa, he had it comin'! I had to hit 'im, hones' I did! If he jus' get back here I'll finish it, too!"

She moved to lunge at the boy, and the children in her path scattered. A valiant few retreated only a pace or two, but most of them vanished, running off behind the henhouse or back amongst the cabins. Those who remained were watching the two men with enormous eyes, waiting to see how the quarrelers would be dealt with.

Cullen hastily caught Lottie by the arm before she could leap onto her opponent. She struggled, but he held her fast. "Be still!" he commanded sharply and, startled by the tone of his voice, she froze. An anxious look was starting to creep into her eyes now, and her rage seemed to be fizzling out.

The boy looked close to tears. Boyd was staring at him with fury and disgust on his thin face. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder, in the same stentorian voice he used when calling his hounds; "_Pip! _Bring me my riding crop!"

"You ain't goin' whip me, Massa?" the boy cried in dismay. He pointed over his shoulder at Lottie. "It was her, she started it!"

"I didn't either!" Lottie said, thrusting out her chin indignantly and looking up at Cullen. "He say things he got no right to say! I had to hit 'im. I _had _to!"

"That's enough," said Cullen. "I brung you over here to have a nice visit with your friends, and I find you fighting. What was you thinking of?"

"He said—" began Lottie. Then the rangy carriage-boy came running, fumbling with his jacket buttons with one hand and carrying a long black riding crop in the other. He pulled up importantly beside Boyd, and offered it with a stiff little bow. Boyd took it and the child before him cringed in fear.

"What's your name, boy?" he demanded.

"Ee-Eli, Massa," the boy stammered. He looked ready to faint from fright: it was unlikely that he had ever before come to his owner's attention, and this was surely not the way he had wanted to make that first encounter.

"Who's your mother?"

"Ti-ildy, Massa." The child's plump lower lip trembled.

Lottie opened up her mouth to say something, but Cullen tightened his hold on her arm and she hushed. They were both in a difficult situation at the moment. It was just lucky this had happened on Boyd's land: he alone of all the neighbors might be inclined to let the matter rest if Cullen handled him right.

"Shame on you," Boyd said. "Tildy's a good woman, and I never had trouble with her in all these years. Fighting with a guest's slave. And a _girl_ at that. Shame on you."

He flicked his crop at a nearby barrel, sawn in half and upturned to serve as a table of sorts. "Bend over that," he said.

Lottie took a quick half-step closer to Cullen, and his hold upon her arm shifted from one of restraint to one of protection. He couldn't prevent her from watching what was about to happen, but he wanted her to know that he would protect her from similar treatment.

Eli was crying now, and trying to hide it. But he hung his head and shuffled to the barrel. He bent over it, gripping the rim with trembling hands. Boyd strode over and raised the crop. He brought it down in a stinging blow across the boy's backside, and Eli yelped. Lottie flinched and Cullen ran his thumb along her arm in what he hoped was a consoling gesture. "Hush," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

Boyd raised the crop again. Eli bit his lip and kept silent through that blow, and the next, and the next. On the fifth he whimpered, and by the tenth he was sobbing noisily. Boyd lifted his arm once more, and the child cowered like a battered hound. Then the crop fell to the man's side and he shook his head, saddened and disgusted. "Shame on you," he said again. "A man oughtn't never hit a girl, you hear me? The only reason I ain't going to sell you off this place is that your mother's a good woman. But I catch you fighting again, you'll spend the rest of your life down in Georgia where they use horsewhips on unruly niggers. Now get out of my sight!"

Weeping piteously and limping with the pain of his beating, Eli scrambled off between the cabins and disappeared from sight. Boyd shook his head, tucking the crop under his arm and taking out his handkerchief. He wiped the sweat from his palm, and then from the handle of his crop. He strode over to Cullen and handed him the whip. "Get it over quickly," he said, a pained look in his eyes.

Lottie, who had begun trembling in earnest sometime around the sixth blow, quailed. Cullen looked down at the slender rod in his hand, with its thin loop of leather. He sent it whistling through the air and brought it sharply against the top of his boot. Even through the leather the blow smarted sharply. Lottie made a tiny, terrified sound and jerked against his hold. Then Cullen held out his arm and passed the crop off to Pip, who took it obediently but with obvious bewilderment.

Boyd stared at him incredulously. "I beat mine," he said. "You got to beat yours."

Cullen shook his head. "A man oughtn't never hit a girl, remember? I'll see she gets what's coming to her, but I ain't going to do it with a whip." Lottie's left hand flew up and clutched at the front of his shirt, but he silenced her with a sidelong glance. "Why don't you just head on back to the house and cool off. I'll see to her."

Boyd hesitated for a moment, then nodded tersely. "I think maybe it's best you don't wait on," he said. "I'll send someone over with your wheel as soon as Mark has it finished. Pip? Hitch up Mr. Bohannon's team. He'll be departing shortly."

Pip hurried away as Cullen's lip curled wryly. "This mean you'll be wanting money for the work instead of company?" he asked.

"Of course not," said Boyd. He smiled. "We been friends all our lives. We're not going to fall out over a couple of scrapping pickaninnies, are we?"

The band of tension that had been gripping Cullen's chest since leaving the stables suddenly released. "Course not," he said. "I'll see you on the first. When your man comes by with the wheel I'll send him back with Mary's answer."

"That's fine," said Boyd. "You take care, you hear? Don't work yourself too hard."

"Don't you," said Cullen equably.

Boyd laughed and strolled away, back towards the house. Cullen and Lottie were left alone in the cluttered side yard with only one lingering little girl, four or five years old, still standing petrified by the corner of the henhouse. Finally he was able to release his hold on Lottie's arm, and she turned earnest eyes upon him.

"Massa, I had to hit 'im. I had to," she said urgently. "He said—"

"Never mind that now!" Cullen hissed. "You and me is getting off this place, and we're getting off it now. We'll discuss it on the way home." He started for the stables, halting when after four steps she did not follow. He beckoned with a pair of crooked fingers. "Come _on_!"

Lottie hurried after him, moving as though to wipe at her bloodied nose with the cuff of her sleeve. "Here, use this," Cullen said, producing his handkerchief. She hesitated, looking at the whiteness of the linen. "Go on. Better to stain that than your one good dress."

Pip was just getting Bonnie into the traces when they reached the stable. He had hitched the horses the wrong way 'round, and Pike was shuffling uncomfortably, but Cullen was not about to spend another ten minutes waiting while the youth rectified his error. Nor could he possibly hitch his own horses on a neighbor's plantation where there was a slave assigned to do it. He climbed onto the driver's seat and took the reins. Lottie stood beside the carriage, eyeing her place with some trepidation.

"Get up," Cullen said. "We're leaving."

She grabbed hold of the rail and tried to hoist herself, but her young face tightened with pain and her foot fell back onto the bare earth. Her right hand flew to her left ribs, and her eyes shone with pain.

Pip was watching, but Cullen didn't care. He got down from the box and rounded in front of the horses. As gently as he could he got his hands under Lottie's arms and lifted her up so that she could get her feet into the buggy. When she was seated he went back to the other side and got up beside her. "Giddyap," he said, flicking the reins. It took the Morgans a moment or two to find their stride with their partner on the wrong side, but they managed it and were stepping beautifully by the time they reached the front of the house. Cullen was glad of that, for Verbena was at the front door bidding farewell to the Trussell girls, whose carriage and driver were waiting. He tipped his hat to them, bowing a little. Greta waved, tittering nervously into her gloved hand, and Paulina curtseyed – but both were staring at him in an unbecoming manner. It wasn't such a shocking thing for a man to drive his own buggy, but he was sitting next to a bloodied black child, and that was certainly peculiar. More grist for the gossip mill.

Knowing the other carriage would be along directly, though travelling in the opposite direction, Cullen drove on until he passed the edge of Ainsley land and entered beneath the shade of the overhanging trees that were the edge of the butcher's land. He pulled off the road into a little clearing where stood an open-sided woodshed and a little locked toolhouse. He tied off the reins on the rail and twisted in his seat to look at Lottie.

"You got some excuse for yourself?" he demanded. "I brung you along to have a nice break in your week, and next thing I know you're fighting with a boy pretty near twice your size. What got into you?"

"I had to fight 'im, Massa!" the child protested. "He said the awfulest things!"

"So you hit him first?" asked Cullen.

"Yassir, but I had to…"

"You hit him first." He fixed her with a stern eye.

Lottie hung her head. The handkerchief was crumpled in her hand. "Yassir," she mumbled shamefacedly.

Cullen sighed and drew his hand across his eyes. "Lottie, what was you thinking?" he groaned. He cleared his throat and looked at her very gravely. "Do you understand what that was you were doing? You were breaching the peace on somebody else's plantation. Do you know what that means?"

"Fightin'," she said in a very small voice.

"Not just fighting," said Cullen. "Agitating. Stirring up trouble. Leading someone else's slave to break the rules. Lottie, what you done back there is against the law."

"All I did was hit that no-'count nigger boy," Lottie protested feebly.

"Look at me," Cullen said. When she did not obey he crooked his forefinger under her chin and tilted her head so she could not avoid his gaze. "Lottie, do you know what could've happened back there?"

"Mist' Ainsley coulda whupped me?" she said. Her mouth crumpled in remembered terror and then she squared her shoulders. "But you wouldn' let him, would you, Massa? You wouldn' let nobody whup one of your own people."

"It's true that I wouldn't let Mr. Ainsley whip you," said Cullen. "But he could have fetched the sheriff, Lottie, and had you arrested for breach of the peace. He could have had me arrested right along with you, for bringing a troublemaking slave onto his land. Do you know what would have happened then?"

She shook her head numbly. Her dark eyes were enormous now, and dismay was writ across her brow.

"We would have both been brought up before a judge, and made to swear on the Bible to tell the truth. And the truth is that you started that fight – I don't care who said what when," he warned as she opened her mouth to speak. "You hit 'im first, and that means in the eyes of the law you started it. You'd have to tell them that, and maybe that boy would testify to the same thing, and the judge would find you guilty of breach of the peace, and me right along with you. And then what would happen?"

'I'd go to prison?" Lottie whispered, horrified.

"Well, not likely prison," Cullen admitted; "you being so young. But the judge would probably order you to be whipped, and him I can't stop, and then I'd have to pay a fine. You know we had a bad year last year, and I ain't got money for a fine. I'd have to sell up the mules to raise the money, and then how would we put in the wheat? And if I couldn't pay they'd put me in jail, and we'd be short a man at home and the tobacco would fail. Do you know what would happen then?"

"We'd starve?" asked Lottie tremulously.

Cullen had to admit he was certainly making an impression, but the child's imagination was leaping rather too far. "We might not starve," he said; "but it'd be a mighty hungry winter. I'd have to sell up some of the land, and raise a loan on Pike and Bonnie. I might even have to take out a mortgage on my people to bring us through 'til next harvest. Do you understand, Lottie? If Mr. Ainsley wasn't such a good friend, what you did back there might've ruined us."

"I'm sorry, Massa," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I wouldn'… I didn'… all I did was hit 'im, an' he needed hittin' bad, Mist' Cullen, hones'."

In her earnest effort to defend herself she had slipped out of her childlike habit of addressing him by his surname, and Cullen felt oddly touched by the note of familiarity. He had said his piece, and now it was only fair to allow the girl to say hers. "All right, Lottie," he sighed. "You tell me why he needed hitting."

"I was down talkin' with Louanne 'n Sairy, an' I was tellin' how you brung me pepp'mints from Meridian. Louanne, she think I was lyin', an' she say "How come he do somethin' like that?". An' I say it's on 'count of me helpin' so good with Mist' Gabe while Missus Bohannon poorly, an' how you trus' me an' let me work 'round the house an' the garden. An' I says maybe I's goin' grow up to be a house servant, if I works hard. Then 'long come Eli, an' _he _say I can't be no house servant, on 'count of we ain't even a plantation no more." Lottie bristled with this injustice, looking up at Cullen as though she expected him to burst forth with an angry refutation of this slur.

"And so you hit him?" Cullen asked wearily. What a damned fool thing to get into a fight over! Children would do such things, of course, and at Lottie's age he had thrown more than one angry punch over far less, but the stakes were so grave that it seemed almost sickening that this should be the cause.

"Nawsir," Lottie said. "Ma raise me betterer than that. I put my foot down an' I tol' him we was too a plantation, an' we gots house servants same as they do. We does, Massa: Bethel's a house servant, ain't she?"

"Yes she is, Lottie; she always has been. She's taken care of that house since my mama came out from South Carolina." Cullen fingered the lowest button on his vest. "What happened then?"

"Then he say we ain't a plantation 'cause you only gots five niggers, an' I tells him it don't matter how many there be, we's still a plantation," said Lottie. "Then _he _says we ain't, cause we ain't got no lady in the house. An' I says we got Missus Bohannon, an' she a fine lady with her pretty clothes an' her hair so neat an' she so kind, an' Eli says she nothin' but some damyankee, an' you gots no right to be marryin' with Yankees!"

"I see. And that's when you hit him."

"Nawsir," said Lottie. "Missus Bohannon, she tol' me there weren't no shame in bein' called a Yankee: that she _is _a Yankee 'cause she come from New York, an' her family fought 'gainst the English for Independence an' they fought 'gainst the English again in some place called Cue… Quee… uh…"

"Quebec," said Cullen. "That was the War of 1812, and I believe her grandfather and great-uncles fought. Never mind that now, Lottie: what did Eli say that made you hit him?"

"Next he say we weren't nothin' but poor folks with a Yankee missus," said Lottie; "an' we's goin' go hungry an' you mos' likely sell us all away, an' I'd never see my Ma again. An' I says you wouldn' never sell us, an' we's your people."

"And you hit him then," said Cullen. "Oh, Lottie, you know I wouldn't sell you away. I'd sell my own hide before I'd do that. And… and if it ever did come to that I wouldn't let you and your ma get separated. I promise you that. You can't go starting fights over fools just trying to scare you."

"Nawsir, I know, sir," said Lottie. "An' I didn't hit him then, either. But then he open his mouth again, an' that time I _had _to hit him. I jus' had to, Massa."

The whole sordid story was becoming more than Cullen could bear, but he could hardly stop it now. "What did he say?" he asked.

"He said…" Her hand balled into a fist of rage around the bloodied handkerchief. "He said you was trash, Mist' Cullen," she said. Her small voice quavered and tears rose in her dark eyes. "He said you wasn't nothin' but poor white trash, workin' like a low-down dirty field hand an' toppin' your own tobacco, an' we was trash 'cause we was your folks, an' you was goin' to come to a bad end 'cause you wasn't nothin' but trash, no-'count trashy poor white. _That's _when I hit 'im. I had to."

She stamped her foot against the floor of the buggy, and pounded her fist in her lap. "He can' say that, not 'bout you! An' you so good to me, an' so lovin' to Missus Bohannon, an' such a good pappy to li'l Mist' Gabe! An' Bethel, she love you, an' Ma, she say you's the bes' master we-all could hope for, an' you breakin' you' back ev'y day jus' to put food on our table, an' workin' in the fields so I doesn' get sick out there, an'… an'… an'…"

She was sobbing indignantly now, fat tears running down her cheeks. "He can' say that, Mist' Cullen! I _had _to hit him!"

"All right, now," Cullen said softly. He put his hand between her heaving shoulder blades. "It's all right. No sense crying over it. People always going to say cruel things when they can. Hush, now, child; it's all right."

Slowly Lottie's weeping died down into quiet snuffles, and she fell very still beneath his hand. Then abruptly she twisted on the seat and flung her arms around his chest, hugging him tightly. Startled and not a little disconcerted, Cullen patted her back awkwardly.

"You ain't trash, Mist' Cullen. You _ain't_," she insisted. "An' I ain't goin' let no worthless nigger whose massa got to beat 'im say you is!"

Then she sat up, smudging her eyes with his ruined handkerchief. She hiccoughed and then winced, rubbing at her ribs again. "I woulda licked 'im, too," she said stoutly; "only he got on top of me, an' he was bigger. Bloodied up my nose, too."

"Let me feel if it's broken," Cullen said. He cupped the back of her head with one hand, and with the other gently probed the bridge of her nose. Lottie watched him, cross-eyed, but she gave no sign of pain as he worked his way down the ridge to the round tip. "That's all right, then. What about your side?"

"It hurts some," Lottie admitted. "But I got 'im in the stomach: stoled his wind for a minute there. Then he got up an' knocked me down. I kicked 'im, though," she added proudly. "Right where he'll feel it."

"I saw that," Cullen said, a little ruefully. He shook his head. "It was loyal of you to take up for me, Lottie, but I can't have you getting into fights with other people's slaves. No matter what they say: you can't fight them over it."

He straightened on the board and reached for the reins. "We got to get on home," he said. "There's other work I can be doing even if the wagon's still useless, and you need to have Bethel take a look at them ribs. Dry your eyes and blow your nose."

Lottie obeyed, shifting uncomfortably in the seat and staring down miserably at her dusty toes. There was a sag to her shoulders that Cullen recognized: the stoop of shame that came from half-believing, however hard you tried not to, that the ugly things that others said were true. That stung him. A child, white or black, needed to be able to be proud of her people.

"And Lottie?" Cullen said. "Next time one of them brats says we ain't a plantation, you tell 'em that I got a thousand acres, an' the United States Government says anything over six hundred's a plantation, no matter how many slaves or who's working the tobacco. You hear me?"

She straightened as much as her sore chest would allow, and she smiled wetly for him. "Yassir, Mist' Cullen," she said. Then her eyes goggled in consternation. "I mean Mist' Bohannon," she said hurriedly.

"It's all right, Lottie," he said. "You can call me Mister Cullen like the grown folks do. I reckon you've done some growing up today, don't you?"

As she nodded vehemently he set about getting the horses turned around.

_*discidium*_

Mary was hanging the last of Gabe's little shirts on the clothesline, reaching up and affixing the wooden pins to the rope. Bethel had just finished bailing out the soiled wash-water, and she tipped some of the rinse-water onto the fire. It hissed, letting out a great cloud of steam. From where he sat playing in the grass with a heap of smooth stones from the creek-bed, Gabe looked up and clapped his hands, crowing delightedly at the spectacle.

With the garment secure, Mary was finally able to lower her arms. Her pelvis ached and she pressed her hands to the small of her back in an attempt to soothe the discomfort. She should have been more circumspect, however, for Bethel turned before she could move out of the telling pose, and her sharp dark eyes narrowed.

"Seems to me you ought to go lie down an' have a nap," she said. "I kin bring you up your dinner on a tray, an' you get off them corsets an' rest."

"I'm fine, Bethel: just a little stiff from stretching," Mary said. She bent to pick up the empty basket that had held the wet clothes, but the older woman swooped in and snatched it.

"Hmph," she said, an entire lecture in one wordless syllable. "Mist' Gabe, honey, come 'n help ol' Bethel with her load."

Gabe planted his hands in the grass and got to his feet, running eagerly to take hold of one edge of the basket. Bethel was bearing the weight, but the child's chest puffed importantly as he walked beside her. Mary watched them move back towards the house, smiling in spite of her discomfort and the impossibly sultry heat that made her petticoat cling to her legs and raised a rivulet of perspiration to trickle down her spine. She had just started after them when she heard a clatter of carriage-wheels from around the front of the house and Bonnie's familiar whinny.

Hurriedly she turned for the gate, leaving the dooryard and breaking into a run as she came around the house. The prospect of being there to meet her husband as he came home, as she had done in the early years of their marriage, was a strangely delightful one. She reached the front just as he swept into the turn towards the barn, and seeing her he reined in the team. His face, tired and furrowed with deep and unhappy thoughts, brightened when he saw her, and that alone made the exertion worthwhile. He hopped down from the buggy, and Mary could almost feel him as he collided lovingly with her and twirled her around him. But with a small apologetic smile he went around to the other side of the vehicle and reached up to help Lottie down.

"Go on and have Bethel take a look," he said to the child. "Tell her I said she could save her questions for me, but she needs to see you're all right. Go on, now."

Lottie came towards Mary, curtsying a little more stiffly than usual as she passed, and then disappeared behind the house. Mary looked after her, realizing belatedly that the girl's upper lip had been smeared with blood. She turned to her husband. "Cullen, what on earth—"

"She got into a fight," he said briskly. "Seems news of my fall from fortune has spread among the local Negro population, and Lottie took exception. Are you all right? You're sweating."

She flushed a little and found her handkerchief to blot at her brow. "It's hot," she said simply. "You're back sooner than I expected." She looked at the buggy. There was no sign of the wheel. "Wasn't Boyd's man able to help?"

"Derned thing needs to be made fresh," said Cullen. "Boyd's going to send somebody 'round with it the minute it's done."

"That's kind of him," Mary said. "How much did he charge you?"

"Not a penny," said Cullen. "He wanted something in trade. He also wanted me to ask whether you'd like to come out to that anniversary party they're having on the first of August. We never did send a reply to the invite."

"Oh, dear, no, we didn't," Mary sighed. The prettily penned invitation from the Ainsleys had arrived one morning not quite two weeks ago. By noon of the same day she had taken to her bed in agony, bleeding copiously onto the rags she kept for her monthly courses. In the aftermath, and with all that had happened since, it had gone straight out of her mind. "I imagine you don't want to go," she said. "Everyone in the county will be there, Mr. Sutcliffe included. But Boyd is your closest friend, and didn't you stand up for him at his wedding? You really ought to go."

"Never mind me," said Cullen. He took her arm and led her out of the sun and onto the shady veranda. He held the back of her rocker so that she might sit, and then perched on the edge of his own. He kept his feet firmly planted and his elbows on the edge of the armrests, as if he feared that if he relaxed into the chair he might not find the willpower to get his work-wearied body up out of it again. "Tell me what _you_ want to do."

Mary smiled. He was always so considerate in such matters. It was a rare man, North or South, who gave his wife such careful consideration when it came to joint decisions. He seemed not only to realize that she had a mind of her own, but to understand that she might want to use it. The matter of county parties was always a difficult one. Mary sometimes felt so isolated on their quiet little farm – plantation – and she missed the chance to see people, to socialize, to dance with her husband who was such a lithe and elegant partner. But she had few amicable acquaintances and no real bosom friends among the planters' wives. They were polite – Southerners were always polite – and most were very kind, but among them she felt her otherness keenly. The gentlemen were far easier to get on with, for they were chivalrous enough that a lady need never want for attention, and for the most part they liked Cullen so well that they would have honored an Irish skivvy if she had been his wife. Still, such gatherings were at times uncomfortable.

But this party, being held at the Ainsleys, would at least leave the Bohannons the advantage of being under a roof where they were unconditionally received. Boyd Ainsley and Cullen were close as brothers: they had done their schooling together, they had wreaked their adolescent chaos together, and they had been young landowners together. Through it all they had remained dear friends. Verbena Ainsley, though not quite as warmly affectionate towards the Bohannons as her husband, had always been extraordinarly good to Mary; doing all she could to make her feel welcome in her new home. She had even made the offer that, when Gabe was a year or two older and ready to start his studies in earnest, he might begin them at West Willows under the Ainsley children's governess. It was the same arrangement that old Mr. Bohannon had had regarding Cullen's early education.

"I think I should like to go," Mary said. "It would be pleasant to have an occasion to dress up and forget work and worries, if only for one night. And Boyd and Verbena have been such good friends to both of us. I know it would mean a day's work lost, but surely the darkies could manage? I… it would be such a treat, Cullen, for both of us."

"You realize I'm likely to be the chief topic of discussion?" said Cullen. "That half the people there will be laughing behind their hands, and the other half shaking their heads and saying 'Oh, what a pity, the poor dears!', which is worse. That if Abel Sutcliffe and I don't wind up with a pledge to meet out on the ridge to settle a matter of honor it'll be a minor miracle."

"Aren't they even more likely to discuss you if you stay away?" asked Mary. "And won't being there remind them that you're still the master of one of the oldest plantations in the county, and you're still your mother's son, and you're still a gentleman? And won't it be fun to irritate Mr. Sutcliffe by showing him his spiteful tale-telling can't touch you?"

Cullen grinned, and years seemed to fall from his face. "Well that's fine, then," he said. "I'll send word we'll both be attending. God knows how I'll make up the lost time 'round here, but I'll manage it somehow."

He got to his feet with the faintest hint of pained tension in his movements, and bent to kiss her. His hand slipped between her cheek and the brim of her bonnet, and he caught a stray strand of hair between his first and second fingers. "You're a wonder," he whispered, stroking it. Then he straightened and stumped down the porch steps, and went to lead the horses with their tidy black load towards the stable.

Mary watched him serenely for a minute, until he reached the barn door and started to drag it open. Then suddenly she remembered Lottie, who had been in a fight and come home from West Willows Plantation with a bloodied nose, and she got up and hurried into the house to see how the child was faring under Bethel's ministrations.


	13. Aphids

**Chapter Thirteen: Aphids**

Long after Lottie finally fell asleep under the light cotton sheet, a cool cloth spread across her forehead, Meg sat up in the heat of the tidy little cabin, staring into the dying embers in the ash-pan of the cookstove. She felt utterly wrung out. It was not so much her day's work, which had been lighter than most with the tobacco between suckerings. She had finished watering the garden, which was in danger of wilting for thirst if this heat kept up, and then gone out to take over mowing clover to dry for winter feed while the men went down to the creek-bottom to chop wood. The wagon had been mended at last by about three o'clock and with the sturdier of the two mule teams hitched to it, it had made two trips up to the flat land near the drying barn with loads of slender logs. Nate and Mister Cullen had not had time to lay out the second load before dark, and it sat there still in the unhitched buckboard; waiting for tomorrow. There was always more work waiting for tomorrow, for all of them, but though Meg ended each day dog-tired and started each new one still sore from the last her present exhaustion ran far deeper.

She had got some of the story from Mister Cullen, and managed at last to draw the rest out of Lottie during that quiet hour when the men were still at their work and Meg was laying on supper for the slaves. She had felt sick to hear the master tell it, but Lottie's reluctant recounting of the precise slurs bandied about by the neighbor's boy had left her cold with horror. Such hateful things for a child to say; such awful things for her daughter to hear. Meg thought that in Lottie's place she would have been tempted to hit the little monster herself. She bristled at the criticism of their home and their sweet-tempered Northern mistress, and of course she could not bear to hear anyone speak ill of Mister Cullen for the very thing he did that was best and bravest. But it was the taunt about hard times and the selling up of the Bohannon darkies that most appalled her. For one Negro child to tell another that she might be sold away from her mother – it was the cruelest and most deliberately hateful thing that Meg could imagine.

There was not a black mother in the world who did not live with a secret terror of such a pass; not a black child who did not imagine it in her darkest dreams. The terrible moment when a boy or girl might be torn from the embrace of a desperate woman, both screaming, both weeping, both imploring their master for mercy – it was a thing worse than death. And worse still than such a parting were the long years that followed: years spent in fruitless yearning and ceaseless worry, never knowing how a beloved one fared each day, whether they slept safe and fed each night, whether they lived in constant fear of the lash or languished in chains on some far-off plantation, whether indeed they lived at all any longer. It was a nightmare often threatened by impatient white men looking for some bogeyman to brandish over a slave, but surely such men could not understand what the words truly meant. Meg did. She knew. From the moment she first felt her little girl flutter in her womb, she had been haunted in quiet and unexpected moments by the demon of separation.

Fortunate even in her first master, Meg had known that she did not truly need to fear being severed from her child by the auctioneer. Even when old Mr. Bohannon had mortgaged most of the field hands to carry the plantation through a bad year when Lottie was two, he had kept Meg and her daughter off the paper. Meg had often wondered how she had come to be one of the fortunate few spared from having her life tied to that second failed crop, but she wanted to believe it was because the old master had tried to keep her and her baby together. Certainly she knew that Mister Cullen would never sell her and Lottie separately, whatever else he had to do to keep his family fed. She did not really think he would sell them at all, except perhaps if she were fool enough to ask him to. He might be better off doing so, and putting the money thus raised into buying up another strong man, but she did not believe he ever would.

It was a rare thing, that trust that her master would truly take care for her wellbeing. Every time Meg went over to visit Peter at Hartwood she came home filled with gratitude to the God who had allowed her to be born twelve hundred yards east of the Sutcliffe land. Every time she saw skinny little Hattie, not yet fourteen, with her plump little yellow boy on her hip and the deadened, beaten look in her eyes, Meg was thankful that her own daughter lived under the hand of a man who would offer his own handkerchief to wipe the blood from her nose and yet expected nothing in return. Every night when she lay down to sleep she did so knowing that she was the property of someone who cared for her beyond her value in work or at market. Someone who might at times, as he had done with the question of putting Lottie in the tobacco, place the needs of herself and her child above even his own health.

Of course Meg still nourished a private dream, as deep and as secret as the fear of separation. In the stillness of the darkest part of the night, just before it was time to disentangle herself from her child's sleeping form and rise to the day's work; in the heat of a sleepy Sunday afternoon; in the hardest hour of tobacco-topping, it visited Meg like the yearning for Paradise. She wanted her daughter to be free. Life as Mister Cullen's slave was about as good as life could get for a Mississippi girl, but it was not freedom. Meg was content for herself, and grateful for Lottie's lot in life, but that did not stop her from dreaming. Free… to go where she wished to and do as she pleased, free to marry anyone she chose and to live with him, too; free to bear her own babies without the dread that they might be taken from her by some awful twist of fortune. This was Meg's secret wish for her child. As unattainable as a return to Eden, it still dwelt deep in her heart like a small, eternal flame.

Lottie stirred on the bunk, the straw tick rustling beneath her. Meg turned to peer into the darkness, unmoving in her chair until she was certain the girl slept on. She had taken quite a pounding at the hands of the bigger child: she had bruises up and down her left side, and of course the bloodied nose, and her hands were stiff from fighting back. But she had taken no serious harm and from what Mister Cullen had said she had fought like a little tigress. Meg was proud of her daughter for standing up for the honor of the family, but she was also haunted by what might have happened. Mister Cullen had explained to her their narrow escape from calamity by the grace of Mr. Ainsley, but he hadn't needed to. Meg had seen Negros whipped for breach of the peace before this, and she did not need to be told that the meagre remains of last year's tobacco money would not have stretched to a hundred-dollar fine, either. Poor Lottie, only doing what came naturally to children, had very nearly dragged them all into disaster.

Meg got to her feet, her arms aching as she hoisted herself. It had been a long day of toting water and swinging the mowing scythe, and in the morning they would all be going out into the corn for what was hopefully the last weeding it would need. As she unbuttoned her dress, Meg found herself praying silently for rain. If it did not rain soon they would have to water the corn as well, and the tobacco would suffer. They might be able to keep a couple dozen rows irrigated with watering cans and dippers, but there was no way to water fifty acres; not like tobacco needed watering. It had been managing all right on the heavy morning dew, but that would not last without a good, soaking rain. Meg didn't need Elijah's dour prophesies, so carefully kept private in the quarters, to tell her there would be trouble if the crop failed. She could see that worry in Mister Cullen's eyes every time he looked out towards the rows of brilliant green. She had seen it in his desperate determination to work on even when he was sickening. Whatever came to pass, the tobacco must not fail.

Down to her shift now, Meg crossed the room and climbed carefully over her daughter's sleeping body. She stretched out with her back against the smooth wall, and tugged a corner of the sheet over her bare legs. Sensing her presence, Lottie curled in towards her, snuggling up to her mother with a soft cooing sound. Meg draped her arm over her daughter, fingers playing in the fine wooly curls at the nape of Lottie's neck. Now that she was lying down her tired body began to overrule her busy mind. She sank swiftly into a deep and almost dreamless sleep.

_*discidium_*

On Saturday afternoon, having dismissed the others to enjoy their half-day of rest, Cullen climbed up onto the roof of the house to see about the loose shingles on the end dormer. The muscles of his upper arms trembled with fatigue as he climbed the ladder, worn out from three and a half days hoeing the corn. It was not hard work by the standards of many other tasks around the place, but it required constant repetitive motion and a light, precise touch that was itself a burden on the body. Still, they had managed to get through the whole crop, and with the stalks now blotting out most of the sunlight over their roots it likely would not need to be done again before the harvest. Down by the tobacco barn there were two loads of timber stacked and drying, ready to be cut down to stove-lengths as time allowed. The garden was amply tended and its picking under control. On the whole it had been a productive week.

Cullen reached the eaves and scrambled up onto the slope of the roof itself. He could have brought up a second ladder with him, to brace between the almost-level plane of the veranda roof and the steep ascent to the ridgepole, but that had struck him as unwieldy and unnecessary. He mounted swiftly and was soon straddling the bedroom dormer. Over his shoulder was slung a sack carrying his tools and the last of the cedar shingles laid by for such repairs. He settled it carefully in the junction between the two sections of roof, and dug out the little iron prybar. Then with his off-hand providing balance against the dormer peak he leaned down to examine the damaged section.

The heat wave had finally broken over Thursday night, and the torrid and oppressive temperatures had withdrawn back to the seasonal average. This was still, as Mary constantly reminded him, quite hot enough, but it was a relief to be able to breath air at least a little cooler than blood, and to have the chance to remove one's hat for a few minutes without fear of taking on a sunstroke. Still, there was no sign of rain.

From his perch, Cullen could just see the first luridly green blush of the high field at the crest of the rise, and he squinted as if by doing so he could see how the precious tobacco plants were faring. It was Elijah's habit to keep an eye on them during the weeks when they were not suckering, and intellectually Cullen trusted to the more experienced man's judgment. Emotionally, however, with the crop occupying an ever-increasing proportion of his fretting time, he found it difficult to let the matter rest. When he was finished up here, he decided, he would wander on down and take a look for himself.

It looked like an easy repair, he was happy to note. One of the shingles in the fifth row had split, and the wind catching its edges had worried loose several of the others above and below. Of these only four looked unsalvageable, but it was difficult to say for certain before he got them off. Starting at the highest affected row, he began digging out the nails with the prybar, careful not to let them drop. A nail was not a thing to be wasted, not anymore. He tucked them between his lips, tasting the hot metal like blood in his mouth. The damaged shingles he flung far off to his left, where they spun like a conjuror's plates before crashing down to earth somewhere on the front lawn. Those that were still whole he set with care on the roof, releasing them slowly to be sure they would not slide down. His labors quickly exposed the underlying layer of tarred felt. It seemed to be intact, and that was another bit of Providence.

When he had cleared away the damaged section he set about laying the shingles. He used the salvaged ones first, on the lowest stripped row: setting them carefully in place and driving nails through into the roof joist beneath. He was good with a hammer, and his blows seldom went awry. This was definitely an advantage when mending a roof, for a stray blow could crack a shingle.

He was just starting to lay the second row when there came a creak of hinges from below, and an eager little voice calling out; "Pappy? Dat you up dere?"

Cullen grinned around his mouthful of nails. "Yeah, son, it's me," he called back, his words somewhat impeded.

"Why you fixin' de roof?" Gabe asked.

"So the rain don't come in and ruin Mama's rugs," Cullen told him. Since this phase of endless questions had begun, he had learned it was simplest to give a straightforward and tangible answer as promptly as possible, and to reposition for the next phase of the interrogation. He never ceased to wonder at the queries his son dreamed up, and he often saved them up to recount to his wife in the privacy of their bed, where they could both laugh merrily without harming the young empiricist's feelings.

The window squeaked again, and Cullen imagined the child, kneeling up on the old steamer trunk, leaning out over the veranda roof and craning his neck to look skyward. "What rain?" he asked.

Cullen's stomach clenched as his child unwittingly prodded at his most pressing anxiety. He covered his discomfiture by nailing down another shingle, placing the nail with care and taking three swift blows.

"What dat bangin'?" Gabe demanded happily.

"I'm hammering down the shingles," said Cullen.

"Can I see?" asked the child.

"No!" Cullen exclaimed sharply. He did not know whether Mary or Lottie were in the bedroom with the boy, and he wouldn't put it past his adventurous son to climb out onto the roof to watch him. "You stay down there and count how many times I tap."

This seemed to satisfy the child, and for a while Cullen worked peaceably, a small voice crying out numbers each time the hammer rang. Gabe only knew his numbers as high as "lee-leven", but after that point he simply started announcing them at random, jumping from "five" to "two" to "seventy-ten". The consensus appeared to be that Pappy was tapping a great many times indeed.

When Cullen had worked through the old shingles, he took out the new ones. They were paler than the rest of the roof, being unweathered, and their surface was rougher. Consequently they sat more firmly against the horsehair matting, which was a boon because they also required more enthusiastic pounding since he was not working through existing nail-holes. During a pause to lay another one, Gabe's voice floated up again. Now it had a nervous note to it.

"Is de roof goin' come down, Pappy?" he asked.

"No, son, I promise it won't," said Cullen. "I know it's noisy. Why don't you go down and see what Bethel's up to?"

"Bet'l an' Mama in de 'mokehouse," Gabe said solemnly. "I s'posed to stay with Lottie."

"Is Lottie down there with you?" asked Cullen. He wondered what business the women might have in the smokehouse on a Saturday. Ordinarily provisions were brought out on Monday for the week. "Lottie? You down there?"

"Yassir," came the girl's voice. "I's right here."

"Good." It was something of a relief to know that he didn't have the sole responsibility for keeping Gabe out of trouble: a three-year-old out of sight of any authority figure could raise a lot of chaos in a very short time. "Son, you just hold Lottie's hand if the banging scares you."

An indignant snort came from below. "I not scared!" Gabe protested vehemently.

"No, of course you ain't. Don't know what I was thinking," Cullen said firmly. "You're just looking out for me, ain't you?"

"Uh-huh," the child agreed. "I's lookin' out for you."

"Maybe you'd want to hold Lottie's hand anyway?" suggested Cullen. "Just in case the banging's scary for her?"

Lottie laughed. "Mist' Cullen, I know you wouldn't never let the roof come down," she said. "I ain't got nothin' to be scared of…" Then she realized what he was doing, and added; "But mebbe I could hol' your hand anyhow, Mist' Gabe? Jus' to feel safe?"

"You may," said Gabe magnanimously. It seemed to be the one refinement of speech that Mary had successfully imparted upon him: for the most part he tended to emulate his father instead. Cullen chuckled softly to himself and straightened the shingle.

"Ready down there?" he called.

"Ready!" Gabe sang out happily. This time when the hammer fell silent there was a sound of plump little hands clapping. "Do it again, Pappy!" the child exclaimed.

"Just gimme a minute to get her laid," said Cullen. He reached for another shingle, and stopped as he turned back to place it, for the ladder had shuddered against the side of the roof. Cullen watched as a grizzled mat of kinky hair appeared over the edge, followed by Elijah's deeply creviced old face. Cullen nodded at him as he hefted his body, still ropey with the muscles of an accomplished foreman, onto the veranda roof. He stood up, dusting his patched trousers with one hand. The other was curled into a fist around something.

"'Lijah!" Gabe exclaimed. "Look, 'Ottie, it's 'Lijah up on de roof!"

"Aft'noon, Mist' Gabe," Elijah said. "How d'you do?"

"How d'you do," said Gabe politely. "What you doin' up here?"

"I's just goin' have a word with you' pappy," the old man said solemnly.

"He fixin' de roof," Gabe told him.

"So he is," said Elijah. "You think he got a minute to talk?"

"Pappy?" called Gabe. "You got a minute to talk?"

"Sure do, son," said Cullen, sliding forward a little on the dormer's ridgepole and beckoning for Elijah to draw nearer. He came up to the very base of the roof, looking up at his master and squinting into the sun. "What is it?" Cullen asked.

Elijah stretched up his hand and uncurled the gnarled fingers, revealing several small buds and a corner of a tobacco leaf on his palm. Cullen grimaced. "What the hell's that?" he muttered.

"Suckers from the bottom field," said Elijah. "She's ready to be done over."

"We knew that," Cullen said tiredly. "We're starting in on Monday afternoon: half-day, every day until picking time, remember?"

"An' this," said Elijah, picking up the scrap of leaf and handing it up.

Cullen bent, bracing carefully with his left hand, and plucked it from the other man's grasp. It looked like a perfectly ordinary tobacco leaf, as far as he could see. Examining the edges carefully he could see no sign of wilting yet; that was some small relief. Then he spied a discolored blotch, like a smudge of soot near the central vein of the leaf. He tried to rub it away with his thumb, but to no avail. "Whatsiss?" he grunted.

"We's got aphids," said Elijah grimly. "Down the bottom wes' corner. I foun' at least five-six plants infested. We leave 'er go, an' this time next week it'll be the whole field."

Cullen restrained the urge pound his fist against the ridgepole, but only just. He screwed his eyes closed and drew in an unsteady breath through flared nostrils. It was just too much to hope for a little luck in bringing in the crop: they had to go from crisis to crisis. "How bad is it?"

"Bad 'nough," said Elijah. "Take a powerful plague of aphids to destroy the whole crop, but they's eatin', an' where they's eatin' they leaves holes. Makes the tobacco curl. An' where they makes them spots it won't cure even."

"Meaning we'll get a crop, but it ain't going to get anywhere close to a decent price," Cullen said wearily. "What's the best way to get rid of aphids?"

"Good hard rain," Elijah said without hesitation. "Wash 'em all down into the mud an' drown 'em."

Cullen looked up at the gloriously blue sky, naked of even the faintest wisp of cloud. His heart was hammering in rage at his helplessness. "Barring that," he said. "What can _we_ do to get rid of aphids?"

"Wet down the nearby plants with garlic water," said Elijah. "Got to paint it on the stems an' the leaves, top an' bottom. Least two or three rows. Then we take up the sickly plants an' burn 'em. That or hope the rain come quick. You got much truck with God I don' know 'bout?"

Cullen laughed hollowly and shook his head. "Garlic water it is, then," he said. "How do we make that?"

"I stop by the smokehouse 'fore I come up here," said Elijah. "Bethel goin' get a batch started direc'ly. It be good 'n strong by Monday."

"It's gotta sit 'til Monday?" Cullen asked despairingly. Five or six plants he could stand to lose, but if the infestation spread far enough to take down even a couple rows' worth of plants they would be in trouble.

"Nawsir; overnight's 'most always good 'nough," said Elijah; "but tomorrow's the Lord's Day. Can' be out in the tobacco on the Lord's Day: it ain't decent."

That was true, and it was also not something that Cullen had any right to ask of his people; that they should sacrifice their day of rest between two weeks of summer's heavy toil. "You just paint it on?" he asked. "Both sides of the leaves, up and down the stem?"

"Yassir," said Elijah. "Picky work; slow work."

"But not exactly what you'd call a scholarly pursuit," said Cullen. "Any way I could mess it up?"

"Not 'less you got careless," said Elijah. "An' I never took you for careless."

"What, never?" said Cullen, almost smiling. He looked down at the fragment of leaf in his hand and tossed it away. He picked up the hammer again. "That all you got to say, Elijah?"

"Yassir, Mist' Cullen. That all." Elijah was squinting up at him thoughtfully. "What you goin' do?"

"Ain't a thing I can do right now, is there?" said Cullen. "Bethel's going to mix up that garlic water, and I'm going to finish this here." He nodded at the shingles. "Not bad, is it?"

"Nawsir," said Elijah. "You's handier with a hammer than any white gentlemen I ever see'd. That a proper good job, there."

"Glad to know you approve," said Cullen, certain he was being flattered but relieved by the approbation nonetheless. If that rain ever did come, they would need a good, tight roof. "You go on and enjoy what's left of your day, now. I'll see you at chore time."

With a parting "yassir", Elijah climbed carefully onto the ladder and disappeared below the veranda roof. Shortly afterwards he appeared again, shambling off towards the willows. Cullen rocked the hammer with his wrist, and the smooth handle rubbed the place where Mary had dug out the splinter on Tuesday night. It had not been able to heal up as it should, because the constant friction of the hoe had kept tearing it open. But that was only a harmless irritation: nothing to the calamity of aphids in the tobacco.

"Gabe?" he called, hoping for a distraction from his mounting anxiety. "You still there, son? Gabe?"

No answer came from below. Doubtless bored by the farming talk, the little boy had wandered off in search of some other diversion. With a low and bitter sigh, Cullen got back to work.

_*discidium*_

"You can't."

Mary stood in the front hallway, staring at her husband as he dragged on his work-boots. Sitting on the bench with his torso bent low over his knees, Cullen raised his head to look at her.

"God will understand," he said patiently. "A man's first duty is to look after his folks, and the only way I know how to do that is to keep them plants healthy. You said yourself you ain't well enough to lace tight for your church clothes, so what's this taking me away from? And if it is blasphemy after all, I guess I'll just have to answer for it come Judgment Day."

"You can't go. I won't allow it," Mary repeated. She had her hands planted firmly on her hips now, and in the blue glow of the early morning her eyes had a strange brilliant glint to them.

Cullen sighed. "Weren't there a story about the apostles picking wheat to eat on the Sabbath?" he asked. "Doing what they had to do to keep from going hungry? You explain to me how this is different."

"Oh, hang the apostles!" Mary cried. Cullen straightened, startled by her outburst. She abhorred strong language of any sort, and even such an invective was considered by her to be unladylike. His shock was complete when she raised her right hand and wagged her finger at him like an Irish fishwife. "You are not going out into the fields today! I don't know about breaking the Sabbath, and you're probably right that the Lord would understand, but I'm not having you give up your one day of rest just because of some bugs!"

"It ain't just 'some bugs', Mary: there's aphids in the tobacco." He bent to drag on his other boot. "Elijah says this is our best hope of stopping them, and I got to try. I put too much into this crop already not to try."

"Then why are you going out there alone?" she asked desperately. "It'll take you all day without help."

"Because I got no right to make the others give up their day of rest," said Cullen. "Nate and Meg and Elijah all worked harder than I did this week: I lost a morning in Meridian, and most of another fixing that damned wagon. Derned wagon. Elijah told me what I got to do: I'm going to get out there and do it."

"You could ask them, at least," protested Mary. "They might want to help. They've put just as much into this crop, haven't they?"

Cullen shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "These ain't hired hands. I'm their master: asking is as good as telling. What they going to do, tell me 'no'? Strike like a bunch of longshoremen? Leave 'em enjoy their Sunday."

"What about _your_ Sunday?" She was beginning to sound quite frantic now.

He shrugged tiredly. "It's mine to give up. Mary, really. All I'll be doing is painting water on some plants, uprooting the infested ones, and having me a little bonfire. It ain't like it's hard work."

"You'll be out in the sun," she argued faintly. "And the dew. You said, Nate said, even Doctor Whitehead said it wasn't good to be out in the dew with the tobacco. It takes on the humors of the night air, and it'll make you ill again."

He gave her his best grin, fearing it did not reach his eyes. "It's only one day. Never hurt me before."

"I won't have it," Mary whispered. "I won't stand for it." Then the fire blazed in her eyes again. "_Why_ can't it wait until tomorrow?" she said insistently.

"By tomorrow the aphids will have spread," said Cullen. "We might lose twice as many plants, or more. I can't much afford to lose what I'll have to taking care of it today." He ran a hand through his hair and got to his feet. "The way things are now, Mary, we got fifty acres of prime tobacco. The best, understand? Quality we got now will fetch top price. We been working ourselves to the bone to keep it like that, but a blight of aphids will ruin it. We won't lose the crop, but we'll be left with bottom-ranked dockside cigarette stuff; four or even three cents a pound. Maybe less. I can't feed us on three cents a pound, much less clear our debts and pay our taxes. I got to stop those little bast—_bugs_, and I got to do it now before they spread too far."

He was right before her now, and he reached carefully to grip her elbows. She stiffened and he thought she was going to shy away, but she stood her ground and looked up at him as he took hold of her. "There ain't no other way," he said quietly.

"I don't like it," Mary breathed.

"I know," he said, and he kissed the bridge of her nose. It was all he could do not to move on to her mouth. With a great exertion of willpower he pried his fingers off her slender arms. "I'll try and come back to the house for dinner."

He hurried for the dining room door, trying not to see how she turned to watch him as if he were going to his death. He went through to the kitchen, where Bethel was just taking the breakfast biscuits out of the oven.

"Where's that garlic water?" he asked.

She looked up, surprised by the question, and her eyes narrowed as she saw his coarse old clothes. "You ain't goin' out there today," she said stoutly. "It the Lord's Day."

"Discuss it with Mary," said Cullen. "Weren't there a story about the apostles—"

"Don' you go tryin' to make out you knows your Bible better'n me!" Bethel scolded. "You never was a 'tentive Christian, even as a little boy. I ain't talkin' 'bout the Bible nohow. You worked six days, an' you needs you' rest. You goin' waste away to nothin', you keep on pushin' youself."

"That tobacco's going to waste away to nothing, I don't get out there and deal with them pests," Cullen argued. "Where's the garlic water?"

Bethel pointed to a dish in which a quantity of crushed garlic, thinly diced onions and what appeared to be a ground-up red pepper were soaking in liquid paraffin. "You add a few drops to a gallon jug an' shake it," she said. "Elijah knows; he can show you tomorrow."

"I'm going out there today. What do I use to paint it on?"

She pointed to a pail by the door, in which the whitewash brushes sat amid a milky slurry. "Monday," she said, thrusting out her jaw.

Cullen scratched at his neck with the edge of his thumbnail, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Bethel, I don't need to explain to you too, do I? Surely you see this has got to be done as quick as possible."

"Oh, I sees it," said Bethel, shaking her head. "I jus' don' like it." She put the biscuit pan on the corner of the table and shook her hand to cool overheated fingers. "You sit down an' eat something while I strain this here oil."

She moved to grab the coffee pot, but Cullen beat her to it. "Strain it, then. I can wait on myself."

He poured a cupful of the rich, dark fluid and dosed it liberally with sorghum. From the tray he snagged a biscuit, steaming hot and fragrant, and peeled off the top layer. It burned his tongue but it was fresh and delicious, stirring up his ravenous appetite. There was side meat sizzling on the stove, and five thin slices of ham, but they were not ready for eating. Bethel was pouring her aphid-repelling concoction into an old vinegar bottle draped with a scrap of cheesecloth to strain out the vegetable residue. She finished and gathered up the cheesecloth, squeezing out the last drops of oil. Then she wiped the bottle down and stuck a cork firmly in its neck.

"Jus' another minute or two an' the meat be ready," she said. "I was goin' to lay on some eggs too an' a bit of fried potato, seein' as it Sunday, an' the last of that broth for Missus Mary. What you think Mist' Gabe goin' be in a mood to eat today?"

Cullen's smile was muted by the realization that giving up his Sunday meant sacrificing his time with his son. "Who knows?" he said, trying to sound cheerful. "He changes his mind more often than he changes his socks." He bolted down the rest of the biscuit and picked up the bottle. From the pail he chose one of the whitewash brushes.

"You ain't goin' out without breakfast!" Bethel protested. "Workin' on an empty stomach'll kill you faster than ague!"

"I ain't got an empty stomach," Cullen argued, pointing at the vacant place on the biscuit tray. "And I ain't got no time to wait for meat. Like I told Mary, I'll try to get back for dinner."

He snatched up another biscuit with the last three fingers of the hand that held the bottle, took his dilapidated straw hat with the one that held the brush, and hurried out the open back door.

_*discidium*_

The tobacco field was silent on a Sunday morning. Even the birds seemed more subdued in their twittering, and there was no wind. Cullen worked with a dull methodical rhythm. It had taken him a couple of attempts to work out the best way to do the job, but in the end he had settled on a system. He had come down from the well with five pails of water balanced precariously in the bed of the wheelbarrow, and an empty gallon jug under his arm. He rapidly realized that he was not going to be able to dip the brush into the narrow earthenware opening of the jug. After some consideration he went back to the toolshed to fetch another pail. He mixed the garlic water in the jug as Bethel had instructed, and then decanted into the empty bucket. A jug and a half filled it, and he took the pail with him into rows. He found the last of the infested plants and set to work on the healthy one in the next row. He would bend as he did when looking for suckers, wiping down first the top and the upper leaves, the stem and the middle leaves, and finally the lowest and broadest leaves, top and bottom. Then for good measure he would splash a little of the mixture – still strong-smelling despite its dilution – around the very base of the stock. Then it was on to the next plant.

It was slow going, and the sun was crawling on to noon. He was sweating profusely and his back ground miserably every time he moved his arms. The sore on his palm was burning from contact with Bethel's concoction, and the skin of his hands felt tight and dry. He had found eight infested plants so far, on the west end of the first three rows, and he kept glancing at those nearby as though they might be suddenly devoured by the insects. The vinegar-bottle was still almost full, but it took a large quantity of water to coat one plant and he would soon have to go back to the well.

His boiling frustration was eating away at him. He had thought the week had been such a good one: a real chance to get just a little bit ahead of the work, even with the bother of the broken wheel and the strain of Lottie's fistfight. As it turned out, nature had just been taking advantage of their distraction to brew up another trial. He was no farmer, but he knew enough to understand that this was at best a desperate measure. If there was something that Man could brew up to keep a blight off a crop, it hadn't been discovered yet. This kitchen garden potion might make the near plants less appetizing to aphids fleeing those he intended to destroy, but there were acres of other plants just waiting for them. If only they had gone for the corn, where the leaves hardly mattered except to shade out the weeds! Even in the garden they would have been little more than a nuisance. But tobacco prices hinged on whole, unblemished and evenly cured leaves… and the survival of the plantation hinged on a good tobacco price.

He tried to wipe the perspiration from his eyes with the back of his hand, and immediately regretted his stupidity. His eyes stung, flooding with water and blurring his vision. Hastily he scrubbed at them with his sleeve, but that only made matters worse. His hand, of course, was drenched in water mixed with a concentrated essence of the most obnoxious vegetables in Bethel's larder. Helpless and almost blinded by thin tears, he straightened his back and let the brush fall into the bucket between his feet. He took off his hat, holding it close to his nose to shade his face, and tried to blink as quickly as he could. It was pointless. Garlic and peppers livened up an otherwise dull meal, and apparently spooked aphids, but they were no fun at all in the eyes.

He heard voices off in the direction of the house: a low murmur and a quiet reply, and Lottie's high, merry laugh. He turned towards the sound, eyes still streaming, and picked out three blurred dark shapes against the bleaching grasses. As they grew nearer his vision began to clear, and he smiled in greeting as Meg and Elijah came up, each bearing two heavy buckets. Lottie was meandering along behind them with a fifth one held by both her nimble dark hands.

"What're you doing out her?" asked Cullen. "Brought me more water, I see."

Meg set down her burden by the ones he had emptied, and took something from her apron pockets. As he blinked away the last of the reflexive tears, Cullen realized she had the two other whitewash brushes. "We come to help, Mist' Cullen," she said. "Lottie an' Elijah goin' help you paint them plants, an' I's goin' fill up these here."

She pointed at the empty pails and then began to load them into the wheelbarrow. Elijah set down his left-hand burden and started pouring out the contents of the right one into the gallon jug.

"I don't want you giving up your Sunday," Cullen protested, not quite able to keep himself from looking at the plants that remained to be treated even just in the first layer of the planned buffer.

"That what Missus Bohannon say," Meg agreed. "An' that's right kind of you. But we goin' spoil this crop if we don' stop these here critters, an' there ain't one of us can bear to spoil this crop."

"I sure don't want Lottie out here," said Cullen. The child was holding a brush like a bouquet of flowers, and watching with great interest as Elijah added a few drops of oil to his mixture. "She's too young for field work, and this stuff ain't exactly a pleasure to use."

"She too little to push this here 'barrow when it full up with buckets," said Meg. "She kin help out in a 'mergency."

Cullen considered this. The work would go faster with more people at it, and they had three brushes. But then it seemed he could feel his temples pounding, and the roiling, rising nausea, and the terrible dizziness. He shook his head. "I won't have that child in wet tobacco," he said. "You go on and fetch the water, Meg: Elijah and I will do this here. Lottie, you go back up to the house and tell Bethel she should fix up a little cold dinner for you to bring to us. Nothing fancy: just what we can get down quick. And tell her I said she shouldn't've told you-all what I was about."

Lottie curtsied and ran off, only just remembering to drop the brush before she went. Meg watched her go and then turned gentle eyes on her master. "How you know it Bethel that tol' us?" she asked.

"'Cause Mary knows how to respect my wishes," said Cullen. He bent down to retrieve his brush and started back to work. Elijah, carrying a bucket, came down to examine the outer row. He passed three more plants that Cullen had not yet inspected, and finally settled on an unblemished one to wet down. Meg lifted the last empty pail into the wheelbarrow. Cullen frowned as an incongruity struck him. "Where's Nate?" he asked.

"He not comin'," Elijah said simply, setting to work at once and avoiding his master's eyes.

Meg, who had just lifted the handles of the 'barrow, let it fall again with a clatter of wooden buckets. She dusted her hands disgustedly on her apron. "He say he won'," she declared angrily. "He say if you wants him to give up his day of res', an' work on a Sunday, you gots to go down the quarters an' make him!" Her disgusted snort clearly communicated what she thought of this.

For a moment Cullen's astonishment overruled everything else. Such an ultimatum from a slave was certainly not unheard-of, but he had never encountered it among his own people. It was insubordination, plain and simple, and the sort of a seditious statement that demanded immediate action. At least it would have been if he or Mary had ordered the darkies out into the field, or even expressed to them a wish that they please do it. But the news that he was out here had come from Bethel, and from the look of things Elijah and Meg had made up their minds to help. Nate was certainly not bound to do something just because his peers decided to, and Cullen had given no order to be broken.

It was a dangerous place that he was put in now, and no doubt Nate knew it. If he let the remarks slide, he appeared soft on a defiant field hand. If he went down there and dragged Nate out to help, he was a man who forced his slaves to work on a Sunday; and worse, a man who felt so insecure in his authority that he was threatened when a Negro spoke out against an order he had not given. Both Meg and Elijah were watching him now, waiting to see what he might do.

Slowly, almost indolently, Cullen shrugged. "I didn't ask any of you to be out here," he said. "If you two want to help save what you've worked for, I'm proud to have you. If Nate ain't interested, that's his decision. I won't take anybody's day of rest, not when they've earned it like all of you have. Since I been your master I ain't never dictated how you spend your Sundays. I ain't going to let no aphids make me start."

He dipped his brush again and swiped it along the underside of a leaf. Meg picked up the wheelbarrow and started away. Elijah kept right on working.

They labored for a little over an hour before Lottie came back with a covered basket. Meg had mixed up her own pail of the repellant after coming back from the well, and with her help they were now on the second row of plants out from the infested stand. They rested long enough to eat their dinner. Bethel had sent out a small feast: cornbread and butter, cold side meat, yesterday's fresh-picked peas, young radishes and three ripe peaches. After his hasty breakfast Cullen was just about mad with hunger, and he ate quickly and with little regard for good manners. The meal was washed down with fresh cold water, also brought to them by Lottie, and then they got back among the plants.

When they were down to their last pail, Meg loaded up the wheelbarrow and trundled up the slope again. Alone with Elijah, Cullen felt able to unburden himself of something that had been troubling him.

"I didn't intend for you to work on a Sunday," he said, bent low to brush the bottom leaves of his plant. "If Bethel put pressure on you…"

"She didn'," said Elijah, not pausing in his work. "She didn' have to. We knows how 'portant a good crop be. If I thought you'd do a fool thing like try this on you' own, I'da been out here first light to help." He shook his head sadly. "I don' know what Nate thinkin', Mist' Cullen. That I don'. He got to know if you go hungry the res' of us do too."

"Never mind Nate," said Cullen. "I told you: he got a right to his day of rest. But Elijah, I surely do appreciate the help."

Elijah grunted gruffly and dipped his brush again. Deciding it was best to let the matter rest there, Cullen did the same. They had been working about ten minutes in silence when the creak of the wheelbarrow was heard and Cullen raised his head to wave to Meg. He was startled out of his stoop when he saw her walking along unburdened beside a broad-shouldered figure steering the heavy load. Remembering himself, he raised an arm in greeting and then bent his creaking spine again and settled his features into a disinterested mask. Nate parked the 'barrow and Meg took a step towards the bucket and brush she had left behind. He put a hand on her arm and shook his head, then marched down the row and picked up the brush. Without a word to either Elijah or his master, Nate set right to work.

Cullen finished his plant and straightened up, lifting his bucket and shuffling to the next one. "Afternoon, Nate," he said courteously. "Good of you to give up your Sunday to help out."

Nate looked up at him, dark eyes unreadable and hand moving steadily among the bright leaves.


	14. In Silence

**Chapter Fourteen: In Silence**

Mary sat in the old chintz armchair in the corner of the nursery, a beam of moonlight playing across her skirts. On the other side of the room her boy slumbered peacefully, his slow serene breathing broken now and then by a low murmuring sigh as he dreamed. She wondered what visions visited Gabe in the night. She hoped they were pleasant ones. It would be good to know that at least one person on the plantation was able to enjoy a happy dream or two. Her eyes travelled to the door, slightly ajar, and she tried to listen for any sound from below.

It shamed her, but Mary did not want to be downstairs when Cullen came in from the tobacco. She had done her wifely duty every night this week, waiting in the dining room and trying to make pleasant conversation while he ate his held-over supper with grim, almost mechanical resolve. It had been a miserable and heart-wrenching ordeal that left her restless and her own dreams tainted with worry. It was hard enough to watch him coming in weary and begrimed with the day's toil, but the dull and defeated look that had been in his eyes since Sunday afternoon was almost unbearable. He had come in from clearing the infested plants stooped and reeking strongly of acrid green smoke, replying to her anxious question that it looked like they'd been able to stop the aphids, but they would have to keep a sharp lookout to be sure. Mary had expected some small note of triumph in this announcement, but there had been none at all; only a leaden exhaustion and an impenetrable stoniness. Her subsequent attempts to draw him out of himself during their scant moments together had failed. She did not know what he was thinking, or why he could not confide in her, and she was worn out from trying.

The distant rattle of the stove told her that Bethel was laying out Cullen's supper. He would be down there now, dragging off his dusty boots and scrubbing the tobacco sap from his hands. She wondered whether he would even note her absence from the table. Certainly he would accept the explanation that she was upstairs with their son; Bethel knew no more than that, or so Mary hoped. The old woman had more insight into the hearts of the family than Mary sometimes gave her credit for, but if she suspected her mistress's motives Mary did not think she would say anything to Cullen. She thought that Bethel knew, or guessed, about the baby – but she had certainly kept quiet about that. The two of them shared a desire to shelter the man they both loved dearly from any unnecessary pain.

There was another secret between them, too: less painful but more pressing. The stores laid by with the money from last year's tobacco were running low. Bethel had taken Mary out to the smokehouse on Saturday so that they could make an inventory. Though sorghum, hominy grits and dried peas were plentiful, they were down to a little more than half a barrel of cornmeal and about three-quarters that amount of flour. The last keg of salt was two-thirds empty, and although they were not yet short of side meat they could see the end of that as well. There were three smoked hams left, along with the one half-eaten in the larder, but they would not last when the side meat was gone. Bethel estimated they had less than twenty pounds of potatoes remaining in the cellar, and those were softening quickly. They had run out of turnips in June, though these had not been much missed by anyone but the cows. Now the seemingly endless bushels of yams that had been dug with such care the previous autumn were reduced to a single sack, and the last of the woody carrots and parsnips had been brought up to give to the stock. While summer lasted they would have milk – and so cream and butter – aplenty, and eggs, and fresh fruit and vegetables, but at Mary's best guess they would run short of nearly everything else long before there was hope of more.

The most pressing problem was the lack of salt. It was needed for preserving food, and now that the garden was producing it was time to think of pickling beans and beets and okra. Bethel had already started laying by watermelon rinds in brine – a curious Southern delicacy that Mary had never quite developed a taste for – and that had depleted their sparse supply of cane sugar. They could use sorghum for canning if they had to, but it left a distinctive tang in the preserves and rendered them, so Bethel said, unfit for offering to company. This was her roundabout way of saying that such things weren't suitable for white folks, but at least where the Bohannons were concerned such conventions had to stretch to expediency. So they could manage without sugar, but there was no substitute for salt, and without it they would have no hope of keeping the bounty from the garden.

Mary had never realized what a great quantity of food eight people could consume in a year until she had to store up most of it in the space of three or four months. In New York a metropolitan household seldom kept more than two weeks' supply of meat or potatoes or sugar on hand: there was always more food to be bought, and in her father's house always the money to buy it with. She relied heavily on Bethel's experience in managing the smokehouse and the cellar and the larder, and when Bethel turned to her for advice she knew that they were coming to a trying pass indeed.

The plan, inasmuch as the two women had been able to make one, was to step out their stores as best they could with fresh perishables. This meant less bread and fewer biscuits in the house and less corn pone in the quarters, and they could not increase the helpings of hominy in proportion lest it too should run short. Those who worked in the fields needed meat to keep up their strength, but at meals when Cullen was not expected Mary and Gabe could have eggs instead, as could Bethel and Lottie at dinnertime. Here at least Cullen's long hours of labor would serve everyone well. There was no way that either Mary or Bethel could see to make the sweet potatoes stretch until the new ones were ready, for if they were to cut back on grains the household needed _something_ to fill their bellies. But the absence would be felt less keenly later, when the heavy summer labor was done. Then they would just have to make do with succotash and black-eyed peas instead. By that time it would be hunting season, too, and Cullen might be able to bring home some venison to supplement their diet until butchering time.

It seemed a workable strategy, but yet again they came back to the problem of salt. There would have to be a trip into Meridian to buy at least two more kegs – four would be better, Bethel said, for salt would be cheaper now than at the end of September and they would need it for the butchering. Mary did not know where the money was to come from, unless Cullen had some laid by in the bank. She had taken occasion when fetching his pocketbook to examine the contents, and the sight had not been encouraging. Still, he could always charge salt at the grocer's and the expense was not the real reason neither woman wanted to broach the subject. The truth was that salt was one of the things, like flour and cornmeal and coffee, that were supposed to be bought up only once a year when Cullen was in New Orleans selling up the tobacco. All such goods were less costly in the port city, and cheap to transport back in the train car hired to carry the tobacco down. They were only a little better than halfway through this year, and the salt was almost gone – before even the heavy preservation could begin. Cullen had not purchased enough to last them, and he might take that as a personal failure. With his spirits as low as they had been of late, Mary and Bethel were both reluctant to raise the matter with him.

Gabe stirred in bed, flopping his head from one side to the other. His curls were plastered damp across his forehead, and his little pink mouth was turned up in a slumbering smile. Mary was tempted to gather him into her arms, quilt and all, but she refrained. He was sleeping so peacefully; it would be wrong to disturb him.

Heavy footfalls sounded on the stairs, and she startled a little. She had not realized she had been sitting so long. The moonlight had slipped from her lap now, and lay like a silver ribbon over the floor. In the corridor she could hear Cullen's breathing: deep and steady and comforting. Then the hinges creaked as the door swung gently inward, and his form was silhouetted against the muted glow of the candle he had left on the little table by the head of the staircase. His shoulders were stooped and his head hung low, and he lifted a weary arm to brush the hair from his eyes as he moved softly into the room. His feet, so leaden upon the stairs, now moved with almost ethereal silence as he crossed to the narrow little bed. He stood for a moment, his back to the corner in which Mary sat, looking down at his sun. The moonlight cast the bridge of his nose in stark relief, and glimmered like quicksilver in his eye. Then slowly, as if every movement brought with it a deep and terrible pain, he knelt beside the bed. His left hand settled on the small of Gabe's back, and his right moved to caress the sleepy little head. Cullen's eyes closed and he pressed his lips together; there was a hiss of breath as he inhaled the clean sunshine scent of his son. His thumb brushed the tendrils of baby-soft hair from the unblemished forehead. Then he bowed his head between stiffened shoulders and kissed the child's upturned cheek.

Mary watched, her chest constricted in a way no corset ever could. Cullen's forehead was buried in the coverlet now, as if he lacked the strength or the will to lift it. His right foot sat in the rivulet of moonlight, and she could see the dark tarry stains on his damp sock. There was a hole in it, too, right where the heel met the arch. Somehow it was this last, smallest thing that raised the lump in her throat and made her eyes sting.

Cullen shifted, pulling his arms off the bed and sitting back on his heals with his hands limp between his knees. He took in an unsteady breath and planted his left foot on the floor. His legs tightened as if to stand, and he wavered. Then, reaching up to grip the bedpost, he hauled himself tiredly back onto his feet. His shoulders twisted a little as if he might turn for the door, but he seemed unable to tear his eyes away from the sleeping child. He reached out, and his fingertips just brushed Gabe's ear.

At last Mary rose, coming quietly up behind her husband and curling her arm about his waist. She placed her right hand lightly upon his elbow and felt him lean into her touch. His shirt was soaked through with perspiration and she could feel every muscle of his body knotted with toil. "What you doing, sitting up here in the dark?" he whispered, his gaze still fixed on their son.

"Watching our baby, the same as you," she murmured.

Cullen shook his head and she hugged him more tightly, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. "Seems like I don't hardly see him anymore," he said. "He's growing so fast and I hardly see him."

There was an uncertainty in his words that clawed at Mary's heart. "You're a good father," she said softly. "You're a good provider, and a good playmate, too. He's been just about bursting with pride, convinced he helped you to keep the roof from coming down."

He made a hoarse sound that was not quite a hushed laugh. "Couldn't have managed without his help," he said. He closed his eyes again and tilted his head to rest against hers. "Why can't they stay this age forever, huh?"

"Oh, you say that," said Mary; "but I know you can't wait to teach him how to ride, and shoot, and dance."

There was a flash of teeth in the moonlight as Cullen almost smiled. "I'd settle for teaching him how to put away his toys." Then he raised his arm and lifted it over his head, settling his hand upon her waist. "Best let him sleep," he said, and led her to the door.

In silence they made their retreat, pausing to collect the candle before walking, still entwined, to their own bedroom. Cullen put the candle on the dressing table and gently slipped away from Mary's arm. He peeled off his shirt and the filthy undershirt beneath it, then went to the washbasin to bathe his face and his underarms. Mary sat down on her dressing stool to undo the prettily painted ceramic buttons of her basque. She hung her dress carefully on one of the closet hooks and stepped out of her petticoats. Her corset was still laced loosely enough that she could unhook the busk without touching the strings, and she felt the strange hollowness of ribs suddenly unsupported. Laying the stays out neatly for tomorrow, she next untied her shoes and pulled off her stockings. Barefoot she padded to the bed and drew her nightgown out from beneath the pillow.

Cullen was dragging off his pants now. Although they were not as sodden as they would have been after a full day of suckering, the sticky tobacco juice had still soaked through to stain his drawers. Mary looked away and lifted her chemise over her head. Clad now only in her pantalets she unfolded her nightgown, spreading it on the counterpane. She had lifted the hem and was just about to slip into the light linen garment when she heard a soft sound from the direction of the washstand.

Her husband was watching her in the golden glow of the lonely tallow candle. He was naked now, his nightshirt gripped in one hand before him as he stood staring at her bare arm and the curve of her breast. Belatedly seeing that he had been caught, he offered a sheepish half-smile and said, in a voice half-tinged with wonder; "Dear Lord, you're beautiful."

Before she knew what she was doing Mary was across the room and in his arms, feeling his skin against hers, inhaling the deep vital scent of his sweat, tasting her youth on his lips. His arms bowed around her, strong hands pressing her bare back. She was waiting for one of them to find its way to the buttons of her pantalets, but somehow it did not. When they paused for breath in their kissing, Cullen pulled back a little and then bent down out of her embrace to retrieve his fallen nightshirt.

"We can't," he said hoarsely as he dragged the garment over his head. "It's too soon: you ain't well enough yet. Doc said we got to wait."

"Doc said—" Mary echoed hoarsely, still giddy with desire and startled at his abrupt withdrawal of his favors. He was around the other side of the bed already, buttoning up the collar of his nightshirt with dark-stained fingers. "But he promised!"

Cullen's brows knit together briefly, and in that instant Mary knew that she had betrayed herself: the doctor might have hinted to Cullen that it was too soon for marital intimacy, but he had not given the reason. Suddenly she felt sick. Now Cullen would ask what it was Doctor Whitehead had promised and she would have to tell him the truth; would have to see the despair in his eyes as he felt his heart break as hers had done. She would have to watch as he shut himself away behind a cold grey stare where she could not reach him or comfort him.

Then Cullen sighed and shook his head. "Yeah, he said you wouldn't want him discussing it, but he also figured you might try something like you just did and I'd have to be the one to keep it from getting too far. Don't be embarrassed, Mary: Doc and me's close." He reached for her nightgown and tossed it to her. "Come and lie down; maybe we could pet a bit if you like."

But Mary did not want to now. Her heart was cold within her and she felt the gulf between them again. Why couldn't they talk to one another anymore? They used to be able to. Once they had shared everything: secret joys and dreams and wishes, private fears and pains and worries. Now it seemed they were so afraid to hurt each other, each so anxious to spare the other one more burden, that they hardly seemed to be married at all. Miserably she pulled on her nightdress, unbuttoning her pantalets beneath it and stepping out of them. She snuffed the candle and got into bed beside Cullen, who was lying on his side to face her. As she drew up the covers he reached to stroke her cheek with the side of one work-roughened finger.

"What's wrong?" he asked gently. "You'll be well again soon, and we can have all the fun we want. There's no sense hurting yourself over a few minutes' pleasure."

"It isn't that," Mary said unsteadily. In the darkness she could not read his expression, but his hand was tender as he moved it down to cup her shoulder. "We don't… why don't we talk anymore?"

He sighed heavily and withdrew his arm, rolling onto his back and punching down the pillow under his neck. "Not enough hours in a day," he said wearily.

"It's not just that," said Mary. "It seems I never know what you're thinking these days. All week you've been brooding over something, and you won't tell me what it is."

"You know what it is," said Cullen dully. "It's the damned tobacco. I can't hardly think about anything else, I'm so busy fretting over it."

"I don't understand," she said softly. "You said it's coming up well, and you stopped the blight without losing many plants."

"Thirteen in all," he muttered. "Just a little corner of the bottom field. Ain't seen no sign the infestation's spreading: Elijah thinks we might be all right."

"But isn't that a _good_ thing?" Mary asked. She wanted to curl close to him, but she could not quite bring herself to do it. When a few minutes ago she had wanted nothing more than his touch, now she did not know if she could bear it. She didn't seem to understand him at all.

"I s'pose so," said Cullen tiredly. "Just it don't feel like it, somehow."

For a long span there was silence. They lay side by side on the feather tick, close but not touching. Mary was just beginning to think that he had slipped into a deep, exhausted slumber when her husband spoke again.

"Them plants we tore up," he said. There was a queer, haunted echo in his voice. "We took 'em out to a bare patch in the pasture and we gave 'em a good douse of kerosene, and I set a match to 'em. Stood there and watched them burn. I spread those seeds and I watched them sprout. I plowed that furrow and laid in the seedlings. I topped 'em and I suckered 'em and I saw 'em grow. Then I tore them up and set fire to them. All that work, gone up in smoke."

"But it was only thirteen plants," said Mary. "You saved the rest of the crop."

"It don't matter," said Cullen. "That's just what this business is: work and worry all year, and at the end of it you're back where you started. Nothing to show for it. No point to it. Useless."

Mary could not speak. She did not know what to say, nor did she trust herself to say it without a tremor in her voice. Cullen shifted, lifting himself with one leg, and then grunted softly as he rolled back towards her. His hand found the crest of her hip and stroked her flank.

"Don't mind me," he said. "I'm just tired. Tired and anxious for rain. It's got to rain sometime, but hell if I can just be patient." He brushed his lips against her forehead. "We got to get some sleep. Morning comes early."

"Yes," Mary whispered. There was nothing more she could say.

_*discidium*_

Working half-days in the tobacco was proving just as miserable as full days. Though they did not get so wet with the dew, they started work already tired out from the morning's labors. There was also no question of wasting daylight: Meg left the field early, but the men stayed on until it was too dark to see. Cullen found that after three days he was just as stiff and sore as he had ever been under the old regimen, and coupled with those aches was the knowledge that they would be a constant companion until he traded them for picking pains. The others did not complain, but he thought he saw the same futility in their eyes: they would have to keep on like this for months, and if the rain did not come all their efforts would be wasted. On Monday Meg had suggested they might try watering the tobacco, but Cullen had vetoed the suggestion and it had not been raised again. The truth was that none of them wanted to make that final admission of defeat: if they tried to irrigate fifty acres by hand it meant that not only had they given up all hope of rain, but that they had taken all leave of their senses. It was just too much work for four people to manage, even without everything else that needed doing.

The garden was flourishing, and from what Cullen could gather Mary and Bethel spent every minute they could spare from the routine household chores picking, scrubbing and preparing vegetables. Time and again when he passed within sight of the house he would see Mary sitting in her rocker on the veranda, stringing beans or shelling peas. On Friday he came in at dinnertime to find the dining room table covered in strawberries, and Mary and Gabe laying out a picnic on the parlor floor. Saturday morning, when they were out in the tobacco so that the slaves could still have their half-day of rest, she and Bethel put up a vast quantity of brilliant red preserves in earthenware jars sealed with waxed linen covers. They were using sorghum instead of sugar, but that seemed to confound Bethel far more than it did Mary. Gabe, who was allowed to scrape the residue from the cooled stew-pot, did not seem very particular. He was waiting with an exceedingly sticky kiss for his pappy that evening.

On Saturday night Bethel drew a hot bath for the master, and Cullen spent the better part of an hour trying to scour the dark stains out of his skin. He was met with limited success, and thoroughly exhausted by the effort. Still it was a pleasure to curl up clean beneath clean sheets, and he would have relished it thoroughly if he had not been too tired to stay awake long enough.

The last Sunday in July dawned of its own accord, without Mr. Bohannon to supervise. He woke up in the early golden sunlight to find Mary tugging at her corset-strings. He bestirred himself to lace her snugly, and then watched with detached fascination as she buckled on her hoopskirt and layered her petticoats over it. While she arranged the flounces and ruffles of her lavender Sunday gown, he put on his own good clothes and combed his hair neatly, plastering it in place with a dollop of quince seed oil. Mary tied his cravat, and he pinned her bar pin at her collar. They made a pretty pair as they descended to breakfast: only Cullen's calloused hands with the lingering tobacco stains disturbed the illusion of genteel prosperity.

Bethel had breakfast waiting, and Gabe was in his usual ebullient mood. He sustained the conversation almost without assistance, and seemed perfectly contented until Mary put on her silk faille bonnet with the broad embroidered chin-ribbons and he realized that Mama and Pappy were going to church. Then there were protestations which might have escalated swiftly into a rage had not both Bethel and Lottie been on hand to offer distractions. While Gabe was trying to decide between a biscuit spread with fresh strawberry jam and Lottie's promise to take him down to see the cows, Cullen and Mary slipped quietly out the front door.

The Morgans kept a sedate pace into Meridian, Cullen perched on the driver's board with Mary shaded beneath the buggy roof behind him. She looked very lovely and demure in her becoming matronly frock, with her hands in white silk gloves folded neatly in her lap. Despite the stiffness in his neck and shoulders Cullen found himself frequently looking back at her, and whenever he did she smiled for him. In that quiet hour it was easy to forget the toils and worries of the recent months, and his own persistent ill-humor. He had a loving wife and a handsome boy, the tobacco was growing well and would thrive if only it got a little rain, and his people were healthy. Surely that was enough to hope for today.

There were two churches in Meridian: the Baptist and the Methodist, both relatively recent institutions. In Cullen's boyhood there had been little by way of organized religion, apart from the occasional camp-meeting when a travelling preacher came through. Mary had been brought up Episcopalian, in the fine old New York State tradition, and she was a firm believer in attending church regularly. In the absence of an Episcopalian minister, the local Methodist parish served the family's spiritual needs. The preacher was a temperate man, not prone to the energetic and sometimes wrathful railing of his rival at the Baptist church. He was also inclined to keep his sermons philosophical rather than political, which to a Northern lady with abolitionist sympathies was an important concern. For his part, Cullen liked the feeling that he was being educated, not scolded, and he enjoyed the singing. Mr. Trussell had made a large endowment that had enabled the church to purchase a full set of Wesleyan hymnals, and the congregation made good use of these despite the want of an organ.

The church lawn was already crowded with carriages and buggies and back-country wagons, and from within came the voices of the early arrivals, already raised in song. Cullen found a spot at a hitching post and tied off the wagon. He strapped on the nosebags for Pike and Bonnie, and then pulled on his gloves to hide his coarsened hands. Then he helped Mary to alight, careful to free her hoop from the buggy-box before it could drag up her skirts. With her hand upon his arm they mounted the steps together and entered the bright, whitewashed sanctuary.

They took their accustomed pew, which they shared with Boyd and Verbena Ainsley, and Mary found the place in the hymnal. She had a sweet contralto voice that never missed a note, and as always Cullen felt a little abashed to raise his own uncultivated one beside her. Mary had had years of music lessons in New York, while most of what he knew of singing came from his father's drinking songs and Bethel's lullabies.

When the service began Cullen made the responses in all the right places, but despite his best efforts his mind wandered. He ran over the work that had to be done in the upcoming week. He tried to work out how he was going to make up for the full day of labor he would lose on Wednesday to the Ainsley party. He wondered whether he might persuade Mary to come with him when he rode out to exercise Bonnie this afternoon: Pike could do with a good gallop too, patient though he was. And try though he might to forget it, he worried about the tobacco. Yesterday he had found one or two leaves beginning to curl at the tips for want of water. They might struggle all summer and they would never manage to keep the fields irrigated. Mississippi summers were hot, but they were usually a good bit wetter than this. They weren't _so_ far inland, were they? There was a whole ocean of water not a hundred and fifty miles away, and yet not a drop of it on the tobacco where it was needed.

He felt Mary's hand on his arm and realized his gaze had been wandering along with his thoughts. He fixed his eyes attentively on the preacher, who was speaking on "suffer the little children to come unto me". It was precisely the sort of gentle lesson the man favored and Cullen preferred. If God was love, as Bethel was fond of saying, why did so many self-proclaimed Christians seem to speak out so hatefully? Take John Brown, for instance. He'd called himself a Christian, but what had he been but a rabble-rouser and a murderer?

His thoughts were roaming wild again. Cullen stood up hastily with the rest of the congregation, following Mary's patient finger to the correct line in the hymnal. With a small smile of thanks, Cullen raised his voice in the simple but heartfelt tune:

_Depths of mercy! Can there be  
Mercy still reserved for me?  
Can my God His wrath forbear,  
Me, the chief of sinners, spare?_

The song went on, but Cullen fell silent. Around him the wealthier parishioners were still singing blithely, but towards the back of the church a lull had fallen. It was breathless and almost more reverent than the hush during the service had been. The poor farmers, and the backwoods-dwellers without good wells to supply their gardens, and Cullen Bohannon the struggling planter, all listened rapturously. For under the voices of the worshipers rolled another sound, a thousand fine fingers tapping on the slate shingles of the church roof, growing first in frequency and then in pitch until even the most oblivious had to have heard it.

The rain had come.


	15. Too Small

**Chapter Fifteen: Too Small**

Gabe sat under the dining room table, trying to push his green ball into an old tin cup. The ball was made of wood, smooth as glass and covered in a thin layer of chipping paint, and the cup was just a little too small to hold it. He kept trying regardless, because he liked the sudden, startling feeling when the ball jumped against the pressure of his hand, and the way it spun in the cup when he pulled his palm over it. It was a good game when he was supposed to be quiet. Bethel was in the kitchen, napping in her chair, and Lottie had told him that Bethel needed her rest. Lottie herself was lying on her stomach on the rug by the sideboard, looking at the pictures in Gabe's book. She couldn't read it to him, and she didn't know the real stories – not the ones that Mama and Pappy found in the book – but she liked to make up her own tales around the engraved illustrations. Gabe liked these stories, because they were always changing, but with the fierce loyalty of a small child he told himself that he liked his pappy's stories best.

He wished that his parents hadn't had to go to church. He didn't really understand what "church" was, except that it was in town and it meant that Mama put on her best dress with the swinging skirts and Pappy wore his good hat, and that they would be away all morning. Gabe didn't miss Mama so much, because she was 'most always around whenever he wanted her, but he didn't like it when his pappy went away. Pappy was never in the house anymore, except on Sundays: Mama said it was because there was so much work to do in summertime. But at least when his father was down in the tobacco, or looking after the horses, or hoeing the corn or chopping wood in the creek-bottom Gabe knew he was not far away. If they needed him, all they had to do was send Lottie out to find him and he would come as he had on the day Mama took sick. That made Gabe feel safe and happy, knowing that his father was close to home just in case.

_In case_ of what Gabe didn't really know, but at three and a half he had an active – if sometimes indistinct – imagination. He was convinced, for instance, that there was a sea-serpent in the well, and that was why Bethel had shouted so loudly when he had tried to look down inside of it. He also wondered what might be in the smokehouse, because he was never allowed in there either. But these were little fears, and they didn't trouble him nearly as much as the feeling he had that something bad was about to happen.

He had felt that way for some time now; long enough that to his child's mind it almost seemed an eternity. There was a foreboding in the house; an intangible feeling of impending doom. He saw it in Bethel's constant anxious scolding – not of him, so much, but of Lottie and Meg and Pappy and even Mama. He saw it when he came into a room unexpectedly and found his mother hugging herself and crying quietly into a handkerchief. He saw it in Elijah's thoughtful frown as he went about the dooryard. And he saw it most of all in his pappy. Gabe didn't understand everything that adults said or did, and he believed he would never understand just what they were thinking, but he knew that Pappy was worried about something. He had an anxious, calculating look in his eyes at most times now, and he only seemed to lose it once in a while, sometimes when he looked at Mama, but more often when he and Gabe were playing. Gabe, who understood that it was hard to think about unhappy things when you were having fun, felt this was hard proof that whatever the threat was it was very unhappy indeed.

The ball popped out of its perch atop the cup again, and rolled off towards Mama's chair. Gabe watched it go and decided not to crawl after it. He wanted to go and play outdoors, but it was raining and Bethel said that little boys who played in the rain most often caught colds in their chests. Bethel had a lot of mighty firm opinions about things like that, and with Mama and Pappy away at church she was the supreme authority on the plantation. Even when Mama and Pappy were home they deferred to Bethel's judgment more often than not.

Gabe turned the tin cup upside down and began to beat on it with his first two fingers. The sound was hollow and low, not at all like a drum as he had hoped. The saucepans in the kitchen made much better drums. He looked sidelong at Lottie, but she was engrossed in the book and not watching him as carefully as she might have done. Carefully Gabe got his knees under him and crept over to his own chair. He slithered under it instead of pushing it out from under the table.

The toe of his left brogan caught on the rug, and he tugged it quietly free. He did not like to wear his shoes: they were hot and they pinched him. But it was Sunday, and Bethel said that good little Christians didn't run around barefoot on Sunday. Gabe didn't think this was fair, because Lottie didn't have to wear shoes, but when he had offered this opinion Bethel had only snorted. "You ain't Lottie," she had said. "You's a white gentleman, an' you gots to behave like a gentleman." Then she had pointed out that his father was a gentleman and always wore his boots, and that had settled the matter for Gabe. He still didn't like it, but he would do it.

He was free from the table now and he stood up slowly, keeping a sharp lookout on Lottie as he did. She was humming to herself and swinging one bare foot in the air. Gabe liked Lottie. She was a good playmate, and she was never too busy to listen to him. The grown folks almost always had other things to do, though they tried to make time for him. Mama said it was because there was always something to do about the plantation, and Bethel would just shake her head and say; "Too much work, not 'nough hands." This didn't make much sense, because everybody had exactly two hands, and if they had three their shirts wouldn't fit, but Gabe did not quite dare question Bethel's wisdom.

He moved as quietly as his brogans allowed towards the kitchen door, and was about halfway there when another sound stopped him. It came neither from the kitchen nor the dining room, but through the hallway from the front of the house. As soon as the rain had started Bethel had bustled about opening every door and window to let in the cool air, and the front door was wide open. From the drive came the splash of hooves and the rattle of buggy-wheels, and Bonnie nickered as someone reined her in. Gabe's heart leaped and his studiously sneaky expression vanished into an enormous smile. He was tearing back across the dining room at full tilt before Lottie could even look up from the picture she was studying.

Gabe burst into the entryway and buffeted against the side of the staircase, stopping at its foot just before the border of the door. Bethel's admonition against going out in the rain visited him then and gave him pause. Eagerly, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he watched as his Pappy climbed down off the driver's board. He had pulled the buggy up almost to the veranda steps, and he hurriedly opened the low door of the passenger compartment and flung back the oilcloth lap robe spread over Mama's broad lavender skirts. Mama was smiling and her eyes were sparkling, and she laughed as Pappy offered her his hand. There was rainwater dripping down the back of Pappy's best hat, and water on the shoulders of his good frock coat. Mama stood up in the buggy, and Pappy looked down, kicking the toe of his glossy riding boot into a puddle forming just at the bottom of the steps.

"Allow me, Mrs. Bohannon," he said cheerfully. Then he reached up and put his hands on either side of Mama's waist, impossibly slender in contrast to her huge, swaying skirts. Mama planted her own palms on his shoulders and he hoisted her out of the buggy, turning as he did so and twirling her around so that he could set her down on the porch steps. He laughed as he did so: not the low, distracted chuckle of recent weeks, but a deep, joyful laugh that pealed on the air and ended in a merry whoop. Pappy's laugh tickled, and Gabe laughed too.

Mama was laughing as well as she scurried up under the shelter of the veranda roof and turned to look back at her husband. Her nimble hands were tugging at her bonnet ribbons, and she pulled the silk confection off of her head and brushed at it. "I do believe it's escaped the worst of it," she said cheerily. "Oh, Cullen, your coat!"

"Hang the coat!" Pappy said, leaping up to the top of the stairs and tugging the garment off. He shook it, and a shower of raindrops fell onto the planks of the porch floor. He was grinning enormously, and he looked young and playful. "It'll dry out. I got to get Pike and Bonnie rubbed down: trotting home wet they're liable to get colicky otherwise."

He tossed his coat over the back of Mama's rocking chair and turned to run back to the buggy, but she caught his elbow and drew him back towards her. They were as close as if they might embrace, but Mama only started to unbutton the front of Pappy's best waistcoat. "This _will_ be ruined if it gets wet," she said, gazing up at him. At least those were her words, but from her tone of voice Gabe didn't think it was what she meant at all.

"Always looking out for my best interests," Pappy murmured. He bent his head to brush his whiskers against her cheek, then pivoted to slip out of the vest. Mama folded it neatly over her arm and reached to straighten his hat. Almost reflexively he poked the brim with his finger, setting it back onto its habitual slope. He swept a playful bow. "I shouldn't be more than half an hour."

Gabe had watched all this transfixed, reluctant to interrupt lest he should break the spell. They both looked so _happy_. It had been such a long time since they had looked truly happy, and he didn't want to spoil it. But now his pappy was jogging down the veranda steps, about to disappear into the stables, and in another moment the opportunity for action would be lost. For a moment the little boy hesitated, glancing at his mother where she stood half-turned away from the house, her broad skirts held out in a flounced bell by her hoops. Then, half expecting Bethel to swoop up behind him and grab his arm to keep him from running out into the rain, he hurried through the door and onto the veranda.

"Pappy!" he called. Then, not knowing what else to say, he announced; "It raining!"

Pappy looked over his shoulder, twisting away from Pike. His grin was so wide that Gabe could have counted his teeth. "So it is, son!" he crowed joyously. "So it is!"

Then suddenly he was back, one foot up on the top step and the other in the puddle, arms outstretched. Gabe ran to him, and Pappy caught him under the arms, swinging him high above his head and out of the shelter of the porch roof. Gabe giggled as his stomach fluttered excitedly. He could feel the raindrops on his head and his arms, and he looked down to see them falling on Pappy's upturned face. The rain was warm and it was falling hard and steadily, untroubled by any wind. There were droplets in Pappy's beard, and caught at the corners of his nose. Gabe reached down as his father drew him close, and patted each of his cheekbones with one plump little hand. Pappy chuckled and whipped his face from side to side so that he tickled Gabe's hands. Then without warning he flung the child high into the air.

Shrieking in delight, Gabe thrust out his arms. For a moment he was flying, high above the ground so thirstily drinking in the rain; high above the flowers bright and blue in their beds; high above his pappy, face upturned to watch him; above even his mama, who was standing in the shelter of the veranda roof and watching with shining eyes. It was a giddying and frightening thing to be so high, airborne without anything to hold onto, but Gabe was not scared. He knew his pappy would catch him. Pappy would always be there to catch him.

He came down again, landing with a soft _whump_ against Pappy's thumbs. The strong arms held him aloft for an instant, and then drew him close, and Gabe hooked one leg around Pappy's side so he could settle against the man's hip. He was laughing so hard that he could not even speak to ask if they might do it again. Pappy jostled him gently and planted one fingertip on Gabe's nose.

"What do you say, son?" he asked. "You want to help me get these here horses settled?"

"Oh, yes, yes!" Gabe said eagerly, nodding his head with such vehemence that his father had to put his free hand against his chest to keep him balanced.

From her dry place on the porch, Mama said; "Oh, Cullen, do you really think…"

"Let 'im come along!" Pappy said merrily. "It ain't a cold rain, and we'll be out of it in no time. Gabe can help me brush Pike, can't you, son?"

"Yes!" Gabe said proudly. "I can, I can!"

"Well…" There was indecision in Mama's eyes, but she was smiling and Gabe knew she would say yes. Mama 'most always gave in to Pappy in the end, especially when he grinned like that. "I suppose it can't do any harm."

"That's settled then!" Pappy marched over to the buggy and lifted Gabe up onto the driver's board. He patted the rail. "You hold on good and tight, and keep right in the middle of the seat, you hear?" he said. Then as an afterthought he took off his hat, dusted it against his good striped trousers to shake off the worst of the water, and planted it on Gabe's head, tilting it far back on his neck so that he could still see. "There we are," he said with a satisfied nod. "We'll make a coachman of you yet."

Gabe gripped the bar with both hands, his feet dangling in their too-small shoes. Pappy went around to the front of the team, taking the reins with him. Gabe wished that _he_ could hold the reins, but he knew he wasn't strong enough to pull in the Morgans yet. Sometimes in the old days before summertime came Pappy used to take him driving, and let him sit on his lap and get a feel for the strength of the horses, but at such times Pappy still kept a good hold on the reins behind Gabe's small hands. Still, as his father led Pike and Bonnie down towards the barn Gabe imagined he was driving. He sat tall and proud, holding tight to the bar as he had been told, and pretended that he was charging off in the swift black buggy on some grand adventure – maybe in the jungle, where it rained all the time.

Pappy hauled the stable doors open and led the horses through. He took them out into the paddock and walked them 'round in a tight circle, then brought them back beneath the shelter of the barn. That was so the buggy would be facing in the right direction next time it was needed. He unbuckled the traces and then handed the lines to Gabe. Now he might play with them, shaking them and slapping them against the bar and pretending to drive, because the horses could no longer feel his tugging in their bits. Pappy unhitched first Pike and then Bonnie, and took off their bridles and rubbed their jaws and noses vigorously. The horses liked that: their ears twitched happily and they tried to nuzzle Pappy's neck. He led them into their stalls and went to fetch the curry-combs.

Now that the horses were away from the buggy, Gabe was allowed to climb down. He did so carefully, not wanting to lose his footing and fall like a baby. He went over to Bonnie's stall and climbed the slats of the door. Pappy was rubbing the mare down with smooth, careful strokes that loosened the mud drying on her flanks and scraped away sweat and rainwater. Bonnie shifted restlessly as he ducked under her head to switch sides, one hoof pawing the straw. This was why Gabe could not go near her when she was being groomed: Bonnie was a restless and high-spirited horse, and she might hurt him without meaning to. She wouldn't hurt Pappy, though, because he was a grown man and because he knew how to handle her. She trusted him and he was always careful to let her know by word or touch exactly where he was and what he was going to do.

When he finished with the knobby wooden curry comb, he took the two brushes with their stiff bristles and slipped the leather straps over the backs of his hands. This was the part that Gabe liked best. Pappy worked with both brushes at once, drawing them along Bonnie's back with quick, short motions so carefully orchestrated that it looked like his hands were dancing. Bonnie made a low noise deep in her throat. Pappy said it felt good to be rubbed down like that: it helped to calm a horse after a long drive and made Bonnie feel fresh and clean. She swatted her tail, and a few hairs tickled Gabe's hands where he gripped the top rail of the door. He laughed a little, very quietly, and his father looked up at him. For a moment Gabe was worried: he was supposed to be quiet around the horses. But his pappy grinned and waggled his fingers around the broad brush, and he knew it was all right.

Next his father took a finer brush, this one soft as Mama's hairbrush, and drew it gently over Bonnie's nose and ears, the sides of her face and the top of her neck. He had to keep one hand on her snout while he did this, or she might toss her head and whack him. Bonnie didn't much like having her face brushed, but she needed it after pulling the buggy all the way to town and back. Last of all, Pappy picked up one leg after another and cleaned her hooves, scraping out mud and little stones and other things that collected as she walked. He dug carefully around the iron horseshoes, and checked each nail to make certain they were firm. Then he stroked the length of her spine.

"Good girl," he said proudly. He looked at Gabe and nodded his chin towards the sack hanging by the feed bin. "Why don't you fetch her a carrot, son?" he asked.

Gabe climbed down and hurried to find a good one. There wasn't much left to pick from: these were the very last of the previous summer's carrots, and they were dry and cracked and old. But he found the nicest he could and handed it through the door-slats to Pappy. He put it on his palm, fingers very flat and thumb tucked close, and held it for Bonnie to eat. Her lips curled back and Gabe caught a glimpse of her big teeth clamp down on the root. Pappy stroked her nose and whispered something in her ear. Then he came out of the stall.

It was Pike's turn next, and Pappy made quick work of the curry-combing. Then he opened the stall door and let Gabe come in. Pike was gentler than Bonnie, and didn't even try to buck silly little boys who pulled his mane by mistake. Not that Gabe would ever do that again: he was much too clever and much to grown-up to do something so foolish. Pappy lifted Gabe up and settled him on Pike's broad back, and gave him one of the brushes. It was too big for Gabe to hold against his palm, so he used both hands to grip the strap. He pulled it smoothly and carefully along Pike's spine, just as Pappy had taught him, then lifted it up and reached forward to lower it again. He had to brush in the direction that Pike's hair was growing, or it would irritate Pike's skin and give him the shivers. Pappy only had one comb to work with now, but he moved just as quickly and skillfully as he had before.

"Use a little more pressure, son," he instructed. "You want to get right down into the roots. Don't worry: you won't hurt him."

Gabe pressed a little harder, and he could feel Pike's breathing through the brush. He thought he would be able to hear his heart, too, if he laid down on his stomach and put his ear to the horse's back, but he didn't do that. He was too old to do something like that: he was supposed to sit nice and straight like a man in the saddle, even if Pike wasn't wearing a saddle and they were only in his stall in the stable. Gabe concentrated on his brushing, working with intense concentration.

Pike was such a good, steady horse that Gabe could even sit on him while Pappy brushed his face. Pike did not stamp or try to toss his head; he only made a little low nickering sound when Pappy had the brush right under his chin. It sounded like a happy sound to Gabe. He guessed the horses missed Pappy too, when he had to spend all his time out in the corn and the tobacco and couldn't ride them as often. Mama said that when she and Pappy were just married, even before Gabe had been born, they had gone riding or driving nearly every afternoon, and sometimes at sunset, too. Gabe thought that when he was a man he would ride his horse all day, wherever he went, and he would have him a pair of tall, beautiful Morgans just like Pike and Bonnie.

"All right, my little man," Pappy said. "Time to get down. I've got to pick his hooves, and you can't be up top for that."

"Yassir," said Gabe solemnly, nodding to show that he understood this most important rule. He waited to be lifted down, but instead of picking him up like he was still a little baby Pappy stood at Pike's side and held out his hands only as far as the horse's flank.

"Bring your off leg up and swing your foot over to this side," he instructed. Gabe looked down at his widely-spread legs, wondering which side was the "off" one. Mama had been trying to teach him "left" and "right", without much success, but she had never said anything about "off'. Maybe it was like the extra hands that Bethel always said they needed?

"Your right leg," said Pappy, reaching across to tap it. "This one here. Lift it up and swing it, but put your shoe down nice and gentle so you don't kick Pike."

Gabe did as he was told, lowering his foot very slowly and cautiously. He thought he saw a grin in Pappy's eyes, but his expression was very serious and man-to-man. "Good," he said. "Now twist 'round so you're facing me and slide off. I won't let you fall."

He didn't really need to make that promise, but Gabe was glad he had. Now that he was so precariously perched Pike's back seemed enormously high, and the packed earth of the barn floor tremendously hard. Pappy's hands weren't even near his knees, but he knew how quick and sure those hands could be. Mustering his courage he let his right leg slip down and his left tuck up a little, and he slid. Pike's side was slick and smooth; smoother than the couch in the parlor. Gabe's bottom skimmed over it very swiftly and he was certain that he was going to go crashing onto the floor, but the very next moment he felt Pappy's hands under his arms, catching his weight without even the slightest sign of faltering. Gently Pappy lowered him to the ground.

"You can stay in here if you want to watch," said Pappy; "but go and stand in the corner by the door, just in case. Hear that, Pike? Gabe's in here with us, so don't you get ornery."

Pike snorted as if to say that it was ridiculous to suppose he would ever hurt Gabe, and Pappy chuckled. He had the brush on his hand again and he gave Pike a few quick swipes where the child had been sitting, then bent to clean his hooves.

"Why you got to do dat?" Gabe asked. He knew the answer, of course, but he liked to hear his pappy talk.

"Well," said the man after a moment's thought; "it's like when you get a pebble in your shoe. It hurts to walk on it, and if you leave it in there it'll rub and rub until you get a blister. Then you won't be able to walk at all without hurting, right?"

"Right," Gabe agreed vehemently.

"Same think with old Pike here. He needs his hooves to stay healthy so he can get on with his business." He was around the other side of the horse now, and Gabe could only see his feet and bent knees and the hand that lifted Pike's foreleg. His other hand, holding the pick, appeared, and he tapped at the horseshoe. "That's why his shoes are made of iron instead of leather, too: his legs work hard."

This raised an interesting question. "Why I gots to wear shoes, den?" asked Gabe. "_My _legs don't work hard."

"You don't got to wear shoes all the time," said Pappy. "But when it's cold, or you're going visiting, or on Sundays it's important. I wear shoes most of the time, don't I?"

"Yup," said Gabe; "but you works hard."

"Who told you that?" asked Pappy, coming around to Pike's right hindleg. His brow furrowed a little.

"Bet'l," said Gabe. "Mama says it all de time, too: dat why you ain't 'round much when I wants to play."

The hoof pick slipped and Pike made a restive noise. Pappy's lips tightened and he finished his work carefully before speaking. "I'm sorry about that, son," he said quietly. "I'd spend all day playing with you if I could, but I got to keep this place running. There's a lot to take care of in summertime; Nate and Meg and Elijah can't do it all."

"I help," Gabe said. "I help'd make jam. I picked dem tops off de strawberries."

"Good man," said Pappy, and he smiled.

Gabe's chest glowed warmly at this praise. "Can I get Pike a carrot?" he asked.

"You sure can," said Pappy. "You can even feed it to him. I think maybe Pike'll be the horse you learn to ride with, just as soon as your legs get long enough."

"When dat be?" Gabe asked eagerly, looking down to see whether they had grown at all since his last inspection from atop Pike's back.

"Maybe not for a year or two," said Pappy. "You're just about big enough to ride a pony, but we ain't got one. And you don't want to learn on a mule."

"Nawsir," said Gabe. "I want t'learn on Pike! I's growin', I promise! My feet getting bigger. Dat why my shoes pinch!"

He had expected his father to be excited by the news that he was growing, but instead the smile vanished from his face and the worried look – so blissfully absent since he had come back from church – was back again. He crossed the small space in a long stride and dropped to one knee, gripping Gabe's shoulders and staring intently into his eyes.

"What you mean, your shoes pinch?" he asked hoarsely. "You mean they're pinching you right now?"

"Yes, bu'—"

Gabe had been about to say that they pinched all the time so he hardly noticed after the first few minutes, but Pappy picked him up and sat him on his raised knee. With his left arm curled behind Gabe's back and stretching to reach, he untied the shoestrings and pulled the brogans off. Then he stripped off Gabe's socks and bent at waist and neck, feeling his toes and looking at the sides of his feet.

"Wiggle them toes for me, son," he said, watching carefully as Gabe fanned out his toes and made them writhe. Pappy's thumb rested on a red spot near the base of Gabe's great toe. "This where the shoes pinch?" he asked.

Gabe nodded unhappily. "An' at de back," he said. He wished he hadn't said anything. His words had stolen the smile right out of Pappy's eyes, and there was nothing there but worry again.

Pappy sighed heavily, shaking his head. "Well, that settles it," he said. He gave Gabe a gentle little swat on the bottom and the boy hopped off his thigh. Pappy picked up the small shoes and waved them in the air. "You ain't ever goin' wear these again, you hear me? Sunday or no Sunday, rain or no rain."

"Bet'l said…" Gabe began.

"I don't care what Bethel said," Pappy declared. "You ain't wearing these again. You tell her _I_ said." His lips smiled, but his eyes did not, and he chucked Gabe under the chin. "Don't worry 'bout it, son. I hear tell Jesus never wore a pair of brogans in his life, so he won't mind you running 'round barefooted one Sunday."

Gabe grinned. He had been wanting all day to go barefoot, and now he had Pappy's permission. "Can I give Pike his carrot now?" he asked.

Pappy nodded and got to his feet, tucking the little socks into his pants pocket and opening the stall gate for his son. Gabe picked a nice big carrot, not too woody-looking, and came hurrying back, slipping past his father's legs and moving to Pike's head.

"Hold your hand flat and get your fingers… well, I'll be." Pappy stopped when he saw that Gabe, without being told, was doing exactly as he had done himself. "Go on, then. Keep it just like that, even if it tickles."

Gabe held up his hand, and Pike bowed his head. His lips drew back and his teeth closed on the carrot. Gabe could feel the horse's hot breath on his palm, and as Pike's lower lip brushed the pads of his fingers it _did_ tickle a little, but he kept still. Then, in a sudden fit of boldness, he reached with his other hand and stroked the horse's nose. It was warm and soft and as silky as Mama's velvet hair-ribbon. Pike nudged his hand gently, still munching noisily on the carrot, and Gabe could not help dancing a little with excitement.

"He kiss me!" he cried. "He kiss me! Pappy, Pike kiss me!"

"So he did," said Pappy, and the smile was back in his eyes again. He looked happy and proud, and Gabe's heart felt fit to burst with contentment.

_*discidium*_

"Mary," said Cullen as he strode into the parlor and flung himself wrathfully into his accustomed chair; "what do you know about Gabe's shoes hurting his feet?"

"Hurting his feet?" Mary looked up from the silks she had been trying to sort by lamplight. "Nothing."

"He ain't said nothing to you?" Cullen's eyes were stormy beneath narrowed lids.

"No!" Mary exclaimed. "I'd never have let him wear them if he had. What did he say?"

"They pinch," said Cullen. "His toes and his heel. They're too d—" He caught himself, remembering the day and his earnest efforts not to curse in the house. "They're too small."

"I knew he was starting to outgrow them, but I never dreamed they were actually causing any discomfort," said Mary. She shook her head. "I suppose that's why he came in barefoot at dinnertime?"

"That's right," said Cullen. "Minute he told me I had 'em off. He probably wouldn't even have said, but he was boasting how his feet were growing and he'd be able to learn to ride soon." He drew a hand across his face. "Why wouldn't he just up and tell us?"

"He probably didn't realize it was unnatural," said Mary. "It's only his second pair of shoes, after all, and the last ones were so soft that he was walking on the sides of the vamp before it was time to replace them. He's only a little boy, Cullen."

"Hang it, I know he's only a little boy! That's why we should've been paying closer attention. Is this what things have come to, when our son's walking around in shoes that hurt him and we don't even notice?" He shifted agitatedly, apparently uncertain what to do with his body.

"These things happen with children," said Mary reasonably. "We couldn't possibly have known until he told us: they aren't even tight enough that he's been limping. You took them off as soon as he told you, and everything is all right. Gracious, why torture yourself over it?"

Cullen folded suddenly over his lap, planting his elbows on his knees and burying his hands in his hair. The quince seed oil residue glimmered against his fingers. "Because I don't see how we can afford to replace them," he said. "A good pair of boy's shoes; that's another two dollars. Maybe two and a half, and he's got to have 'em. Townsend will give me credit, but what happens if I can't pay it off come November? And I got to empty out our account at the bank, or else start up a tab at the grocer's too: Bethel says we got to have salt or she can't pickle the vegetables."

"She told you?" Mary said quietly, surprised.

"Yes, she told me," Cullen sighed. He sat back again, tipping his head towards the ceiling and closing his eyes as if the dancing reflection of the kerosene flame pained him. "Guess she thought I was in a good mood on account of the rain."

Through the open windows the soft patter of raindrops on the grass, and the louder clacking on the veranda roof came comfortingly. Mary glanced towards them. "It is a blessing, isn't it?"

"One good rain in three weeks? More like the least Providence could spare us," said Cullen. Then he relented. "Yes, it's a blessing. But it's a small one. Three months 'til priming time: a lot could happen in three months, and it seems like all I do is dream up the worst possibilities. What I wouldn't do to wake up tomorrow morning and find October had come and the tobacco was safe! I ain't got a farmer's temperament, Mary. I worry too much."

"Yes, you do," she said lovingly; "but you needn't. We'll managed somehow; we always have before."

He looked down his nose at her and he made a soft sound of assent. "You're a wise woman," he said. "I'm lucky I got you."

Mary said nothing to this, but turned her gaze back on the fine, brightly-colored hanks of floss. She had an overabundance of yellow, it seemed, and she was running low on red. When she finished her sampler full of roses she would have to think of some new design to use the more plentiful threads. "About the shoes," she said. "He doesn't need them straight away. He's been running barefoot as a little Indian during the week, and it's been all Bethel can do to keep them on his feet on Sundays."

"I shouldn't wonder, since they've been paining him," Cullen muttered darkly.

"What I mean to say is that he can manage perfectly well until the weather turns," said Mary. "Then we can buy them larger than he needs, and they'll last longer. A sound pair of shoes is a good investment, but we needn't rush into it."

"You sure?" asked Cullen. He had raised his head as she spoke, but there was a suspicious look in his eyes as though he thought this solution to his immediate concern seemed rather too simple to be true.

"Yes," said Mary. "On Long Island where the weather changes so quickly it would be out of the question, and of course if we lived in the city he would need them whenever he went out, but on a f… on a plantation in this Southern heat he has about as much use for shoes in July as the barn cats have."

He looked at her for a moment, wonderingly. Mary had chosen her words with care: simultaneously explaining her reasoning and offering validation of his choice to bring her down to his home instead of uprooting himself and trying to make a life in the North. She knew he sometimes wondered whether he had done the right thing in spiriting her away to Mississippi, but if he had doubts she never did. As strange and sometimes uncomfortable as her new life was, she would never have traded it for cool drawing rooms and stiff political receptions on Manhattan Island. She smiled for him, a small serene smile, and the corners of his mouth twitched ever so slightly.

"Even if we could wait a few weeks," he said. "I'd feel better about spending the money if the crop was further along."

"I know," said Mary gently.

They sat in silence for a while, watching one another. At last Cullen got to his feet with a poorly suppressed grunt of weariness. "I'm off to bed," he said, shuffling for the door. "You coming?"

"In a little while," said Mary. "I wanted to get a start on a letter to Jeremiah."

He turned a long eye on her, leaning on the doorpost, but he did not seem to read too deeply into her words. He shrugged his shoulders and hid a yawn with the back of his hand. "I might not be able to wait up for you," he said. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Mary said, and mimed a kiss for him. Moments later she heard his stocking feet on the stairs, carrying him up towards their bedroom. She tucked away her silks and opened her sewing box. Her brother's letter was under her pincushion, and she unfolded it carefully, studying his neat, bookish hand as she considered again the terms of his proposition.


	16. Making Ready

**Chapter Sixteen: Making Ready**

The rain fell steadily through Monday, growing colder all the while, and did not let up completely until late on Tuesday afternoon. At first the fields seemed to gorge themselves on the water, thirsty roots drinking deeply and puddles gathering only where the earth was packed hard: in the dooryard, in front of the barn, on the paths leading from the house and the cabins. Then the low places began to fill, and little rivulets ran down the rows of the garden to pool by the pasture fence. The shimmer of the rain in the grey daylight imbued colors with a peculiar livid quality; particularly the brilliant green of the corn stalks, now suddenly resplendent with fresh vigor, and the darker hues of the willow leaves. The air smelled clean and cool and strangely new, and the scents of dill and chives and bay-leaf were strong in the garden. The rain washed the dust from the whitewashed rails of the fences, and the last shriveled blossoms from the magnolia that overlooked the drive. It swelled the shrunken creek and wetted the potato-hills and drove the sows and their half-grown litters to shelter in the lean-to hut that adjoined their pen. The chickens, on the other hand, were delighted: they went splashing about their little yard, snapping up the grubs and earthworms flooded up to the surface, and flapping their coppery wings in raptures of delight.

Most of the outdoor work could wait until the rain passed, but not the tobacco. As Elijah had rightly said they had to be out there every day if they meant to put in half-days of work, and so Cullen and the field hands donned their oilskins and covered their heads with crude palmetto-frond hats and went out to start on the top field again. The lofty goal of working dry was forgotten, but at least they had a break from the heat. The mud was terrible, though: they sank in it to well above the ankle, and Meg had to wear Cullen's old boots with the toes stuffed with straw to keep from filling her shoes with the oozing muck. It clung to their calves and spread up their legs, it coated their hands and traveled thus to shoulders, necks, brows and elbows. It clumped on the lower leaves of the plants, and choked the stalks so they had to brush away thick, sticky clods just to check for the insidious little suckers that kept them outdoors in such inclement conditions. Try as he might Cullen could not keep the stuff off of his face, and the stink of it gnawed at him: the faint, sour smell of the loam that seemed to haunt his very dreams. He used more water now than he had during the heat wave, trying to rinse the mud from his hands before he touched the dipper to drink. And when the rain itself finally stopped the mud only seemed to grow thicker and more obdurate – more malicious.

He called work to a halt an hour before sunset on Tuesday, because they were wasting more energy fighting the mud than they spent in the constant, exhausting stooping. Marking their places with handkerchiefs now no more than muddy rags, the three men floundered through six inches of churning mire to the end of their rows, and had to seize the tops of their boots in order to pull their feet free. They left great caked footprints in the wet indiangrass as they trudged to collect their buckets. For once it was not Cullen's back that was his chief tormentor: his thighs burned with fatigue from the effort of dragging against the very earth itself. He was wet through to the skin, and his overalls were heavy with a coating of mud. He hung them on their accustomed peg in the toolshed without much hope that they would dry by the next day, but he did not put on his wool pants. He did not even touch them, for his hands were coated in dark gummy filth: a gluey mixture of mud and tobacco juice. He parted ways with Nate and Elijah in the dooryard and waited until they were out of sight among the willows before he approached the back door.

He did not get up onto the stoop, where he would leave a trail of grime that someone would have to scrub up, but halted by the first step. "Bethel?" he called, keeping his voice as low as he thought he could while still making himself heard in the kitchen. When no answer came right away, he tried again.

The door opened and Bethel stepped out onto the mat, a puzzled frown changing to wide-eyed disapproval as she saw him. Cullen imagined he must look a bedraggled wreck, half-clad and dripping and fairly plastered with mud. He had given up on his hat early on, and his hair clung in straggles to his neck; it too was cemented in place with globs of muck. The sun had not set yet, but there had been a chill in the air all day and his weary back seemed coated in a thin sheen of cold. He gestured vaguely, almost apologetically.

"You got a rag and a pail of warm water?" he asked. "I'll try to rinse off out here so I don't go tracking all over your clean floor."

Bethel opened her mouth sharply, and then snapped it closed again. She wiped her hands slowly on her apron, and said at last; "Ain't goin' do no good rinsing," she said. "Them clothes is choked with mud."

"Bring me something to cover up with, then, and I'll take 'em off," said Cullen. "No sense bringing this lot into the house at all."

The old woman's jaw jutted defiantly. "You can' run 'round the yard with nothin' on," she said stubbornly. "It ain't fittin'."

"Bethel, I ain't in the mood to argue," Cullen said. "I'll go rinse at the well if I have to, but I'd sooner have warm water. Mud gets into everything: you know that. I go in there like this, it'll be all through the house in no time. And my neck's getting sore staring up at you like this."

For a moment he was certain she was going to scold him, but her face merely furrowed into a frown and she disappeared into the kitchen. He stood where he was, absentmindedly trying to wring out his shirttails while his boots settled even into the hard earth of the dooryard. Finally the kitchen door opened again and Bethel came out. She set a bucket of water on the stoop, and a pile of rags and an old quilt on the bench by the door. From a peg on the wall she took down a rusty old tin tub and put it down by the edge of the step. "Put them wet things in there," she said; "an' wrap up. I got water boilin' for you' bath: no sense dirtying up fresh underthings for a few minutes' wear. An' hurry up 'fore you catch your death of damp. Las' thing we need is you comin' down with pneumony."

Then she hurled herself back into the house, slamming the door behind her. Cullen almost smiled as he stripped off his shirts and fought with his boots. His socks were sodden, and he hoped the wet had come in over the tops of the boots instead of through some unseen hole in the stitching. He wasn't much of a cobbler, and he didn't relish the idea of wearing leaky boots until winter. He planted one bare foot on the second step and leaned to drag the bucket nearer. He tried to scrub his hands, with limited success, and then splashed water on his face and the crown of his head, and then over his shoulders and arms. He had hoped for water that had been standing in the warmth of the kitchen all day, but it felt as though Bethel had added some hot water to the pail: it was warmer than he had expected and where it fell it took some of the chill from his skin.

Cullen poured a little over each foot and then finally dared to step up onto the stoop. He took a quick glance around, lest Lottie or some unexpected trespasser should be wandering near, and then peeled off his muddy drawers. He rinsed the worst of the muck from his lower body and then flung the clouded contents of the bucket far out into the yard. He wiped his hands hurriedly on one of the rags, and then wrapped the quilt around his lean body, gripping it closed at neck and hip. Then awkwardly, working with the last three fingers of his left hand, he turned the door handle and slipped into the kitchen.

Bethel was emptying the big copper kettle into the washtub, which she had pulled up close to the stove. The larger of the two oven doors stood wide, its innards glowing an enticing orange. Steam was rising out of the tub, and a fresh head formed as Bethel poured. She turned to look at Cullen, skulking like a drowned cat by the door, and shook her head.

"What you do, roll 'round in it?" she asked. "I ain't see'd you so filthy since—"

"Plowing time?" Cullen asked dryly. He would never understand why Bethel felt the need to make a fuss every time he got himself into a bit of a mess, but he was more interested in the tub than the mystery. "Hot water?" he said, picking his way across the kitchen floor. He was leaving damp footprints, but at least he had left most of the mud outside. "How'd you know that's just what I wanted?"

"It what you need, or you never goin' get lookin' clean an' respectable," said Bethel. "You scrub up good, an' you call me if that water need changing." She filled the kettle again and set it on the stove. "Add this here if she cool down, an' make sure you scrub hard. When you's clean, give a goin'-over with the store soap, or you goin' smell like hog fat an' lye. An' don' forget them ears: bless me if you ain' got mud up in there too."

She moved around him with the age-defying grace she always exhibited in her kitchen, and closed the dining room door tightly. Left alone Cullen hurriedly let the quilt fall and climbed into the tub. He huddled as low in the water as he could, bring up handfuls to pour over his knees and his shoulders. It was deliciously, almost painfully hot, and the muscles of his hips seemed to relax almost at once. He turned a little so that the radiating warmth of the open oven fell full across his back, and scooped up a handful of coarse homemade soap to start his scrubbing.

He had rinsed off the worst of the mud, but the water grew quickly murky. It took several attempts to scrape all of the gunk off of his hands and forearms, and by the time he was finished with his knees and elbows he was running out of energy. Bethel had set the wash-pitcher with the other bathing accoutrements, and he poured a little of its water over his hair. He had washed it on Saturday and ordinarily could have gone until the end of the week without troubling with it again, but there was mud in his hair and he could feel it drying in cracking layers on his scalp. He dug deeply with his fingers and then took two fingerfuls of soap to work through the straggled tresses. When he had raised a good lather he bowed his head low over his lap and poured more water over his skull, eyes screwed tightly shut against the harsh, stinging soap. When he had finished he washed his beard as well, and then rinsed his face thoroughly. There was even mud in his eyebrows, but he worked that out with his fingertips and left the soap alone. Then he picked up a flannel rag from the floor and used it to clean the shells of his ears, as Bethel had instructed.

The water was starting to cool, and the kettle on the stovetop was bubbling merrily. Cullen had just started to seriously consider hauling his tired bones up to fetch it when there was a soft knock at the door and, without waiting for his reply, Mary slipped into the room. She was wearing an old but freshly laundered dress, and her hair hung down her back in a loose plait. He noticed perplexedly that it was damp, and that her skin had a rosy, freshly-scrubbed glow to it. In her left hand she held her carved ivory comb and her small silver embroidery scissors.

"Are you almost clean?" she asked, slipping between the tub and the table. He craned his neck to look at her, startled by the intrusion and still trying to work out why she should need to bathe on a Tuesday afternoon. "I thought I might give you a little trim."

She bent, reaching over his shoulder to feel the water with her fingertips. Then she stood up and reached for the heavy kettle.

Cullen scrambled to his feet, water streaming from his back and legs, and seized the vessel before she could lift it. "You ain't supposed to be straining yourself," he said. Even his own arms, stronger than hers and used to hard work, felt the weight of the laden pot. He hauled it off the stove and bent to pour it into the water lapping at his calves. Then he replaced it on the stove and froze, acutely aware of his nakedness and abashed that she should see him like this. What was perfectly natural in the privacy of their bedroom seemed somehow indecent in the kitchen. Chagrined, he crouched down and slipped under the scanty cover of the water.

"You needn't behave as though I've turned to glass," Mary said. She fetched the stool that stood by the dish dresser and settled it on the floor behind him. Then she fingered through the towels that Bethel had laid out for him and chose the most threadbare of the three. She sat upon the stool and set it on her lap, then put the comb and scissors on top of it. Cullen felt her hand against the nape of his neck, guiding his head down. He rounded his back so that she could pour a measure of water over his head. "I'm quite myself again, and I haven't had any pain for days now."

"How many days?" Cullen asked, huffing a little as water trickled into his mouth. Mary was twisting his hair to wring out most of it.

"Two," she admitted. "But I'm feeling strong and healthy." She settled the towel over his shoulders. "Sit up straight, now, and try to relax."

"You could wait 'til I'm decent," said Cullen, only halfheartedly. The truth was that he wanted to soak a little longer, even if his legs were cramped in the tin tub, and if he knew Mary was waiting on him he wouldn't feel right doing that. Her fingers played through his overgrown hair, picking out the worst of the tangles before she set to work with a comb. "I don't see why it's got to be done tonight, nohow."

"Because you're starting to look like one of those up-country wild men who come into Meridian on donkey-back trying to trade skunk skins for buckshot," said Mary. "I don't expect you to shave like a stockbroker or cut your hair close like an Englishman, but I do draw the line when I begin to suspect small animals of nesting on your head."

She gave his head one last going-over with the comb, and then drew out a small section and started to clip it with the embroidery scissors. "How are the plants?" she asked quietly, with the air of one reluctant to broach a painful subject but too plagued with wondering to refrain.

"Thriving," said Cullen. "Seems like they've grown a good inch a leaf since the last time through: the rain's been good for 'em. And if we missed any aphids they're been drowned right out now. Elijah says if we can get a good stretch of sunshine and another few rains we'll have a good crop."

"I'm glad," said Mary earnestly. "Are you feeling any better about it now?"

"I feel like somebody cut the noose right before the hangman dropped the trap," said Cullen. "Trouble is, there's always another rope kicking around somewhere."

Mary laughed, but it was not a very earnest laugh. "When did you become such a pessimist?" she asked.

Cullen shrugged, and she straightened the towel before it could slip from his shoulders. "Farming don't exactly encourage a man to expect the best," he said.

"Have you ever considered trying another crop?" said Mary.

"How many does one man need?" asked Cullen. "There's tobacco and corn, the yams, the hay, wheat in the winter, and the garden. Not to mention them peaches. And the potatoes."

"I meant a different cash crop. Cotton, for instance." She was near the crown of his head now, working with practiced and gentle fingers. It was a surprisingly sensual thing, to have Mary cut his hair. It always made him feel like twisting around and taking her in his arms and playing his fingers against her own scalp, twisting silken auburn locks around his thumbs and kissing them. He never felt much more than bored with sitting when it was Bethel with the scissors.

"What do I know about cotton?" said Cullen. "Never mind growing it; how'd I even sell it? What price do I ask? How do I know if the buyer's trying to cheat me? It costs money to gin it, too: tobacco I can cure right here. If Nate and Elijah knew it maybe we could, but they've always been tobacco men. Pappy bought up Elijah in South Carolina, specifically because he was an experienced tobacco hand. I got tobacco slaves, and a tobacco barn, and fields that ain't held a cotton seed in twenty years."

"It just seems that cotton wouldn't be such hard work," said Mary.

"Maybe, maybe not," he told her. "It ain't so profitable per acre, so we'd have to plant more. That's more plowing, more seeding, more hoeing. And when cotton's ready, it's ready. You got to pick it quick, before it dries up and blows away, and if you get a rain at harvest time you'll lose it. At least with tobacco it can stand a wetting right up until you get it picked. No, cotton's a crop for a big plantation. Too late to try it now."

Her hand rested on his shoulder, scissors held aloft by thumb and forefinger while the other three dug into the knotted muscles at the base of his neck. "But day after day, bowing and stooping to look for suckers…"

"Man gotta stoop in cotton, too," Cullen said. He was beginning to feel rather drowsy, and the hot air wafting from the open oven was lulling him off into a dreamy state. "Whatever he plants, a farmer's gotta stoop."

"Planter," Mary whispered, almost to herself. Then she drew back her hands and stood, taking the stool with her. She set it at the side of the tub and sat again, facing him this time and carefully tucking her skirts so they would not brush the side of the stove. "Lean a little closer so that I can reach," she said.

He complied, closing his eyes while she snipped at his side whiskers and the hair that framed his face. When she started to work the comb through his beard, he was able to look at her again, but not to speak. He watched her instead; her quick, bright eyes and her delicately arched brows, the quiet invitation of her rosy mouth, and the soft velvet flush of her cheeks. She had her gaze fixed upon her work, and did not see him watching until she gave his moustache a last little snip and looked at him. She smiled, a tiny and intimate smile, and then palmed the scissors with the comb and used her newly-emptied hand to straighten his damp curls.

"There," she said. "I'll be the envy of the county with you to squire me about."

She sat back, smoothed her skirts, and then stood gracefully. She moved behind him again, this time to fold up the towel to catch the fallen hairs. "Have you had a going-over with the store soap yet?" she asked. "You can't have your dance with Verbena Ainsley if you smell of lye."

"Dance?" Cullen echoed. Then it came back to him with the crushing force of half-forgotten responsibilities. "Aw, hell, that's tomorrow. _That's_ why Bethel's making such a fuss over a mid-week bath."

"Yes, of course," said Mary, a note of surprise in her voice. "What did you…"

"I forgot," he groaned, drawing his hand over his face. The callouses were softened by the hot water, but a loose tab of skin still scratched across the bridge of his nose. He opened his eyes and studied his palm, clean now but streaked with dark stains. He exhaled wearily through his nostrils. The last thing he wanted to do was put on his good evening clothes and act like an idle dandy for the benefit of neighbors who knew the truth anyhow.

Mary's hand descended on his back, warm and soft against the bare skin. "We don't need to go," she said. "If you're too worn out; if you'd rather not – we can send Nate in the morning to make our apologies."

Cullen shook his head. "I got to go," he said. "You want to stay home that's all right, but I got to go. I gave my word."

"Boyd would understand," said Mary. Her voice was gentle and reasonable, but the temptation in those words was terrible. "He's your friend, and he knows how hard you work. He'd never hold you to—"

"Dammit, Mary, how do you think I'm paying for that wheel?" Cullen burst out, irritated with her for trying to give him a way out and furious with himself for wanting to take it. "I agreed to come to his fool party and liven it up a bit for him!"

Her hand drew back and her shadow retreated a little. He could not bring himself to look at her, and the ache in his back was not entirely to blame for that. "You agreed to go to his party to pay for the wagon wheel," she repeated slowly, like a schoolchild trying to make sense of a difficult lesson.

"Yes," said Cullen, sitting forward and groping for the sponge. He reached for the half-spent bar of factory soap, pale orange and scented with lemon and rosewater, and lathered his hand so that he could rub it under his arms. "I asked him what he might take in trade, and it's all I could offer that he had any use for."

"All you could offer," Mary echoed. "That we should go to his anniversary supper."

"Me," said Cullen. "Not we. I told him I couldn't speak for you, but I'd ask what you wanted to do."

"And if I had said I didn't want to go? Then you would have gone alone?" He could not read her tone, and he did not want to. He soaked the sponge again.

"I s'pose so," he muttered.

"In payment for a wagon wheel…" For a long breath there was silence, but for the crackle of the stove and the soft sounds of the water. "Cullen, isn't that a little… isn't it just a bit like… well…"

She could not finish what she was trying to say, and he was glad. She was still behind him, and he was glad of that, too. He knew his eyes were very hard as he spread the pleasant-smelling soap where the foul-smelling stuff had been, and rinsed away the thin veneer of gentility with a swipe of the sponge. "I gave my word, and I got to go," he said. "If it shames you to come along with a man who'd strike that kind of a bargain you're free to stay here. I won't have you suffering to pay my debts."

"Of course I'll go with you," said Mary. "I want to attend; I've been looking forward to it all month. I just… I wish you were going because _you_ wanted too as well. You deserve an evening of pleasure, not another night of work."

Finally he twisted in the tub, one knee thumping against the rolled tin edge. He looked up at her and mustered a smile. "It'll be a pleasure to see you in your finery, and a pleasure to dance with you," he said, and to his relief he found that the words were heartfelt. "The rest don't matter."

Her worried eyes softened, and she smiled. "You have a very charming tongue, Mr. Bohannon," she said in her primmest imitation of a Southern matron. They both laughed, just a little, and Mary curtsied. "I'll leave you to complete your toilet," she said. "Do hurry, though: Bethel's anxious to get you fed."

_*discidium*_

It had taken the combined efforts of Mary, Bethel and Elijah to keep Cullen from going out to take care of the stock, thus squandering the benefits of his bath, but they managed it both on Tuesday night and the following morning. Mary had even contrived to coax him to lie down for an hour before their early dinner, gathering his energy for a social engagement likely to stretch on well into the night. Now, clean and brushed and perfectly respectable-looking, he was waiting in the parlor while Mary dressed. She had helped him into his evening suit – three years behind the fashion but so carefully cared-for that it might have been brought fresh from the tailor that morning – and admonished him gently not to go crawling around on the floor after Gabe. Cullen had given his solemn word, and after grinning sheepishly at a sharp look from Bethel had made his retreat.

The bedroom was now transformed from its usual state of good order into a bower of chaos and femininity. Petticoats, sun-bleached and freshly starched, sat in a burgeoning heap on the counterpane. Mary's patent spring-steel hoops were hanging from the back of the door. She had laid out her silk stockings and her best lace corset-cover on the dressing table, and her velvet dancing slippers stood daintily on the braided rag rug on her side of the bed. Crimson hair ribbons and the beautiful scrimshaw comb that had been a favourite ornament of her girlhood lay waiting by her brush. Despite the warmth of the day there was a fire in the hearth, and Bethel took the heated flatiron off of it to press the dainty tatted lace of Mary's best chemise.

Occupying pride of place across the foot of the bed was Mary's ballgown, liberated from its box the previous afternoon and now spread out in all its glory. It was made of airy French silk: crisp as tissue-paper and yet substantive as tarlatan. It had been woven of fine threads in two colors: a bright peacock blue in the warp and a glossy midnight black in the weft. The result was a gown that seemed to glitter like a sapphire, shifting tones as it moved. The delicate basque was trimmed with a stomacher of ruched blonde Valenciennes lace, and delicate swaths of a matching silk voile, beautifully embroidered, formed dangling "angel wings" over the dainty puffs of the sleeves. This addition, made after the gown's first wearing at her wedding banquet, rendered it suitably modest for a married lady while still allowing the charm and cool comfort of bare forearms. The new flounced bertha that Mary had made last Christmas out of a china silk shawl updated the gown and made its age far less obvious than the cut of Cullen's coat. The skirt, twelve yards of silk that rustled almost mystically as she moved, was gathered up into scallops with strips of the same pale lace. It was an exquisite gown, and it was bejeweled with the memory of one of the happiest nights of Mary's life – second only to the night her son was born.

Bethel had finished with the chemise, and Mary slipped out of the plain one she had been wearing. She had already put on her best pantalets, with the neat pintucked cuffs edged in dainty white lace. They would not be seen, of course, but she would know that she was wearing them and they would lend her confidence. Then it was time to put on her corset.

Mary had only the one corset now, for her second-best had snapped six whalebones during the transplanting of the tobacco seedlings. It still lay in the bottom of a drawer, crimped awkwardly at the waist and robbed of its well-worn dignity, against the day when there might be a little spare money to have it repaired, but Mary was making do quite nicely with only the one. It was rather shabby-looking now, discolored a little where dress-shields had slipped, with the green flossing snagged in several places and the center eyelets stretched, but it was still a serviceable garment, and no one would know that she was wearing an old corset.

Mary hooked the tabs of the busk with care, and settled the lower edge along the crest of her hips. She adjusted her bosom carefully and nodded to Bethel. With the artful swiftness of a trained lady's attendant – something that had astonished Mary the first time this elderly cook and maid-of-all-work had helped her to dress – Bethel tightened the corset-lace, smoothing Mary's torso and nipping in her waist. Bethel drew on the strings until the garment was snug, and Mary measured her waist with her hands.

"It isn't tight enough," she said. "The gown will gape."

"Jus' let it settle a bit, an' I'll lace you tighter," said Bethel. "Give that body a chance to get used to it: you ain't been laced tight since you took sick, an' I ain't goin' let you faint away firs' thing you gets to that party. Sit down an' I's goin' fix your hair."

Mary obeyed meekly. Bethel had a way of making her will felt whatever the circumstance. Among Southern slaveholders and Northern missionaries alike there seemed to be a prevalent opinion that Negroes could not take care of themselves; that they needed the white man to shelter and guide and protect them. Opinions differed on how this ought to be done, and whether servitude was a necessary part of such ministrations, but there was no dispute on the darkies' need to be looked after. Yet after four years in Mississippi Mary was inclined to think that it was Bethel who looked after the Bohannons, and not the other way around at all.

Bethel had brought up last summer's copy of _Godey's Lady's Book _from the parlor and she had it propped against the dressing table mirror, open to a page of elegant hairstyles. She worked swiftly and deftly, piling Mary's hair in sculpted coils and pinning it in place. As she watched her reflection, a beautiful chignon took shape under the same dark hands that picked the beans and stirred the fire and scrubbed the floors. She realized with some surprise that Bethel had no more been brought up to live this life of hard work and constant struggle than her master had been. The old lady picked up the scrimshaw comb and settled it at the back of Mary's head, burying the smooth tines so that the finialed edge was only just visible over the mass of hair, like a glorious seashell arising by magic from an auburn ocean.

"That sat'sfactory, Missus Mary?" asked Bethel. Her expression in the mirror was mild, almost timid: like a young girl looking for approval from some well-beloved monarch. In that expression, Mary thought she could see who Bethel had once been, long ago.

"It's splendid," she breathed, stroking one dangling curl with a wondering fingertip. "My hairdresser in New York could never have done better."

Bethel smiled knowingly, and the glimmer of youth was gone. She was once again the capable and practical mainstay of the household. "I 'spects we kin tighten them laces now," she said.

Once Mary's corset was tightened to an acceptable girth, it was time to layer on the underpinnings that supported the broad, fashionable skirt. First she put on a slender muslin petticoat with a deep ruffle that just brushed the top of her ankle bone. This was for comfort in case of a wayward breeze, and security in case of some unthinkable mishap that might hoist her hoop beyond the scant decorous inches common during an energetic reel. Then Bethel held her hoopskirt so that Mary could step into it. It was a complicated contraption: tapes and steels that spread out from her body to achieve the fashionable belle-shaped silhouette prized throughout the world but nowhere (so far as Mary could see) so much as in the elegant homes of the Southern aristocracy. She was secretly relieved that the fashion endured, and that her father's gift of an extravagant trousseau had included the best hoop that money could buy, because it would have been scandalous to appear at such a gathering without one. It was simply not possible to achieve the proper shape with petticoats alone, and she would have collapsed under the weight of undergarments required even to make a dispirited attempt.

A plain linen petticoat went over the hoop, and over that went Mary's best: fine muslin with deep flounces to smooth the lines of the cage and a rich border of subtly darned lace at the hem. This was necessary because a glimpse of the top petticoat was virtually unavoidable even if one did not dance, and Mary certainly had no intention of sitting out the evening. She was young, and she was married, and she had a nimble and attentive husband: she might dance to her heart's content.

The corset cover was next: a pretty little confection of lace and tucks and fine green ribbons that matched the flossing on her stays. Then Mary sat down so that Bethel could put on her charming slippers with the high spool heels. Finally it was time for the gown.

Bethel lifted the basque and supported the weight of the skirts, while Mary lifted the hem carefully over her beautifully-dressed hair. Briefly she stood ensconced in a narrow silken tent, and then Bethel was settling the frock into place and Mary's arms found the sleeves. The gown settled around her waist, and Bethel straightened the skirts expertly, then took the thin satin ribbon and the smooth steel bodkin and laced up the back. The bodice stretched smoothly over Mary's corset, its perfectly-fitted seams settling over her breasts. With the exception of the inch that she had let out of each of the side-back seams to accommodate the changes to her waist after giving birth to Gabe, the gown fit precisely as it had on the day she had brought it home from the fashionable Manhattan dressmaker who had also made her wedding dress. Bethel smoothed the folds of the bertha and fluffed out the rosettes of lace set with ribbon-roses in a blue that almost matched the silk. Mary went to the dressing table and opened her little rosewood jewel-box.

She had an onyx cameo that had belonged to her grandmother, but it was too sedate for an anniversary celebration. Her bar pin was the wrong shape entirely. A month ago she might have made a little nosegay of peach blossoms and magnolia for her bosom, but they were all gone now. So she picked up a little velvet bag from the corner of the bag and drew out her garnet brooch. It was set in gold, the small blood-red jewels coiled into the shape of a rose in full flower. It had been a gift from her mother on the occasion of her debut, and she had treasured it through the years. She pinned it carefully at the center of her bertha, slipping it from side to side until it was perfectly placed. She had a pair of fringed gold earbobs made to match at Cullen's request: a first-anniversary gift. Two silver bangles slipped onto her left arm: one just above the elbow and one just below. She hesitated for a moment before reaching into the very bottom of the box. Gently, with the reverence of one who handles a treasure she does not own but has only borrowed from a daughter not yet born, she drew out a dainty necklace.

Its foundation was a slender serpentine chain of gold, draped with swags of still finer chain. Between each one hung a teardrop-shaped cartouch in which sat a smoky emerald surrounded by brilliant little diamonds. The central pendant was larger, with a second setting hanging below it: each set with stones to match the others, but larger. Even away from the window the jewels glittered with the splendor of an earlier age. Mary looked at it, struck as always by its beauty but also a little wary of it. A question in her eyes, she looked at Bethel.

The dark old eyes seemed very bright. "Missus Mary, is you goin' wear that?" she asked.

"Is it too extravagant for a quiet little party?" Mary asked, a little embarrassed.

"No'm," said Bethel, shaking her head. "No'm; it jus' right. Only… if you goin' wear it, might I… might I put in on fo' you? The clasp, it sticky, an' I don' want you to poke under you' nail an' bleed."

"Yes, of course," Mary said, smiling warmly as she handed over the necklace. Bethel unfastened the clasp with remarkable smoothness, if it was indeed as sticky as she said, and came behind her young mistress to settle it around Mary's neck. The jewels spread and the chain slithered smoothly into place, and Mary felt Bethel's warm fingers at the nape of her neck. Then the dark hands smoothed the necklace and spread to make a pretext of straightening the bertha, but Bethel's gaze was fixed on Mary's reflection, and at the dark jewels against her fair skin. She seemed lost in memory.

"It jus' right," she said at last. "Missus Mary, you's the prettiest Yankee I ever see'd."

A reticule, dancing gloves, and her sandalwood fan completed the ensemble, and Mary was ready to depart. Bethel held the bedroom door for her, and she swept through it. Her first few steps were a little unsteady, as she accustomed herself to shoes she had not worn since the new year, but by the time she reached the top of the stairs she was moving with the accomplished grace that her girlhood dance instructor had spent such a long time teaching her. The stairs were rather too narrow for the hoop, but she drew it in demurely with one hand and reached the bottom with her dignity intact. With the uncanny instinct he seemed to possess for a lady's private desires, Cullen never waited for her in the hall to witness her imperfect descent. Mary was able to smooth her skirts and compose herself before stepping up to the parlor door and into view of her husband.

He had been sitting in his chair as promised, talking to Gabe as he played on the floor but not climbing down to join him, and he got to his feet as she came into view. His gallant smile showed none of the weary resignation of the night before, and he bowed his neat, Southern bow. "Why, Mrs. Bohannon," he said, love and delight in his voice; "you're a vision of loveliness."

Mary came into the room and he stepped around the pedestal table to offer her his hand. He drew her into a twirl that sent her hoop billowing, and caught her about the waist as if in a two-step. He kissed her behind her left earlobe, and one gloved finger reached to touch the largest emerald at her throat.

"Mama's necklace," he murmured. "I don't remember her wearin' it, but I reckon she didn't look half as lovely as you."

Mary flushed deeply, unsure of how to respond to this most poignant of compliments. But Cullen grinned and twirled her again, looking her over from head to toe with an appraising eye.

"Now then, son, don't your mama look pretty?" he asked gleefully.

Gabe, picking himself up off the floor with a wooden horse in each hand, nodded enthusiastically. "You look pretty, Mama," he parroted. Then his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Where you goin' dress't like dat?"

"We're going to see Mr. and Mrs. Ainsley," said Mary. "It's their anniversary party." Gabe's face began to crumple with the realization that he was to be left behind.

"But before we go," said Cullen; "I think maybe you oughta get the first dance with Mama, don't you? Come on over: I'll show you how to waltz."

Gabe was far too small to waltz, of course, and with Mary's voluminous skirts between them they could hardly reach one another's hands, but Cullen made a solemn ceremony of setting Gabe's fingers upon those of his mother, and instructing the boy that no matter what occurred a gentleman _never_ stepped on a lady's skirts. Then while he hummed a few bars of a lively minstrel tune – far too fast for even the most energetic of waltzes – that had been doing the rounds of the county for months, Mary and Gabe began swaying to and fro in the small open area before the hearth. Bowed to be low enough to reach her child, with her skirts thrust out behind her and her earbobs swinging madly Mary supposed she made a rather foolish picture, but she did not care. All that mattered was that she was having fun; that her child was beaming up at her with newfound grown-up importance to his bouncing gait; and that Cullen felt cheerful enough to sing. It was almost a shame when he came to the end of the verse and let off with a rumbling false baritone; "…south… in… _Dix_…ie!". But Gabe released her hand with a joyful laugh and wished them fun at their party. And Cullen offered her his arm and led her out onto the veranda and down to where Nate had the buggy waiting. Mary settled on the cushioned leather seat, and Cullen climbed up in front, and they were off to the first real social gathering they had been to in months. She felt young again.


	17. Southern Courtesy

_Note: So, I'm curious. Why is Chapter 13 so popular? It's got twice as many hits as most chapters, and a lot of them are from Italy. I'm intrigued._

**Chapter Seventeen: Southern Courtesy**

Bonnie was tugging impatiently on the traces, but Cullen held her fast and kept her at a sedate walk. The road was muddy and pocked with puddles that had still not dried up entirely despite the sunny morning, and although Mary's skirts were sheltered by the lap-robe it did not do to take a chance of splattering her fine clothes just to save a few minutes in the drive. He had to be careful of his own garments, too, for he did not have the protection of the buggy-box or the stout canvas blanket. There had never really been any question of having Nate drive them, though in prior years this had been their habit. Cullen's departure was enough of a burden on the plantation without taking another pair of working hands away for the day. He regretted it, for Nate likely would have enjoyed hanging about West Willows and visiting with the Ainsley slaves, but it couldn't be helped. He just hoped that the black man wasn't too bitter, and would do as Elijah told him and get on with his work in the master's absence. The tacit rebellion of ten days past still weighed on Cullen's mind, not much mitigated by the fact that Nate had given in at last, either to his own conscience or to Meg's admonitions. The very last thing he needed was a one-man slave uprising on his hands.

"How you fixed back there?" he asked, deliberately cheerful as he glanced over his shoulder. Mary made a beautiful sight, sitting with her hands folded neatly over the spreading lap-robe and the bodice of her best gown rising smooth and slender above it. So as not to disturb her elaborately dressed hair she had left her bonnet behind, but the buggy roof shaded her face quite well. From its shadow she smiled.

"Perfectly content," she said. "Everything is so green and beautiful after the rain."

Cullen nodded, turning his eyes back on the road and smiling a little to himself. She kept reminding him, ever so gently, that the turn in the weather over which he had been agonizing for weeks had finally come. He knew what she was trying to do, but he wasn't sure there was much chance of it working.

They came to the break in the trees where the cotton fields came within sight of the road. They were empty today: the festivities meant extra work for the house servants, but a holiday for the field hands. They would be enjoying their own big supper tonight, in honor of their master's wedding anniversary, but it was the day free of labor that was the real treat. That was something Cullen had never really understood in his youth, but now he would have given an awful lot to have just one day to do as he pleased, without the burden of promises and responsibilities and worries that constantly dragged upon him.

They were coming up on the lane, and he slowed the horses still further to make a gentle turn. Behind him Mary swayed a little, gracefully, and the buggy jounced a little as it settled onto the smooth, raked surface of the plantation drive. Cullen adjusted his hat and sat up a little straighter on the board. He fixed a pleasant, aloof expression on his face and let the Morgans have a little more rein as he clicked his tongue.

"Pick 'em up!" he urged. Bonnie immediately stopped her straining and fell into a smooth, prideful prancing with Pike. She loved to spend her energy in a good canter, but she was every bit as fond of showing off, and as they broke from the cover of the willows and she realized she was performing for a crowd she tossed her dark mane and nickered eagerly.

The lawn before the West Willows house was crowded with carriages and buggies and fine riding horses, while Negro drivers held reins and settled nosebags and waited for directions from their hosts. Pip, the Ainsley carriage boy, was striding around with an air of tremendous importance; his coat was neatly buttoned today, and he had a well-brushed bowler on his head. He was giving instructions with the same confidence as the two older grooms, and what was more remarkable was that the visiting slaves were all deferring to him without question. Cullen, who was reasonably certain he had interrupted the boy's illicit nap when he had come in with the wagon wheel the previous fortnight, was not quite so impressed. Still he was not a spiteful person and had no wish to cut down Pip when he was enjoying a taste of adult responsibility, and he did not shout for him as he drew up the buggy to a neat halt. Instead he looped off the reins and sat patiently, waiting to be noticed.

He did not have to wait long, of course, for a carriage without a black driver was out of place in this throng, and a guest without his own slaves on hand had precedence when it came to attention from the host's servants. Pip appeared swiftly at Pike's side, bowing to Cullen and tipping his hat to Mary. Cullen handed him the lines and hopped down from the box, straightening his waistcoat as he landed. From his watch pocket he pulled out a dime, brought along for precisely this purpose, and flipped it to the boy.

"Find 'em a good spot," he said with a conspiratorial wink, and then turned to open the buggy door. Mary was looking at him with a worried inquisitive gleam in her eyes. He thought perhaps she was wondering about the money, which of course they could not really spare. But tipping the carriage boy was one of those few customs Cullen felt strongly about keeping, particularly when he didn't have his own man on hand to look out for his horses and had to rely on Pip to take good care of them. He smiled for Mary as he carefully folded back the lap-robe so as not to allow its dust to fall on her skirts. He offered his gloved hand to her, and she rose with a grace that no costal aristocrat could match. With her other hand she gathered her skirts and planted one slippered foot on the buggy's cast-iron step, and hopped neatly down to the ground. He was ready to catch her hoop if it snagged, but it did not, and in a moment she was beside him, her fingers resting daintily on his arm and her fan open to raise a gentle breeze for her face.

Or rather, apparently, to conceal a whisper, for she used it to shield her mouth and murmured; "So many people! I thought it would be a small gathering."

"For Boyd Ainsley's tenth wedding anniversary?" Cullen said incredulously, managing to keep from chuckling in surprise at her naivety. "Not a chance. Every society family in the county will be here, and likely some from as far away as Jackson and Selma." He reached across to pat her hand. "Don't worry 'bout it: you'll still be the prettiest lady on the place."

Mary closed her fan and smiled radiantly. "I'm not worried," she said. "Only a trifle surprised."

"Four years," he whispered as they drew near the veranda steps; "and we can still surprise you."

Boyd and Verbena were standing together to receive their guests. Boyd was wearing a dinner suit of a sedate grey that managed not to wash out his pale complexion. It was cut wider in the waistcoat and the jacket than Cullen's, showing off the fine ruffles of his shirtfront. Verbena's gown of rose-coloured silk was pretty enough, but Cullen didn't think it a match for Mary's. Then again he didn't know much about ladies' clothes, and was quite likely prejudiced anyhow.

"Afternoon, Miss Mary. Cullen," said Boyd, bowing to his friend and offering his hand to the lady. Mary took it, curtsying as he bowed, while Cullen did the same with the hostess.

"Afternoon, Miss Verbena," he said. "You look a picture."

She smiled politely and said; "Why thank you, Mr. Bohannon. I trust your drive was a pleasant one?"

"Very pleasant," said Mary neatly. Several pairs of eyes turned at the New York twang on her voice, and only those who knew the Bohannons looked away. "But of course it is such a very short drive."

"That's so," said Verbena. "We really ought to see more of each other, being such close neighbors. I'm so pleased you were able to join us this evening."

They were the ritual pleasantries of polite society, but at least with Verbena they seemed to run a little deeper than that. Cullen suspected she hadn't much approved of him even in the old days. When she and Boyd were first married he had still been an idle bachelor, running a bit wild and dragging his friend along on the occasional expedition. What she thought of him now he couldn't guess, but whatever it was she didn't seem to hold it against Mary. She had always been kind and welcoming, and even if it was just the same trained placidity that made her such a model of Southern wifedom he was grateful. Mary was complimenting the azaleas now, and Verbena was offering the modest opinion that their present beauty was largely owed to the recent rainfall.

Boyd had been snagged by one of the Graham boys, and the younger man was talking loudly and enthusiastically about some matter of business while his host listened politely. The Graham in question didn't share most of his friends' interest in dancing attendance on the county's flock of unmarried belles, who were milling about the lawn and the porch and the entryway with their beaux on their arms. Cullen, for his part, had very little interest in cattle speculation, and let his eyes wander elsewhere.

At an evening gathering few guests had brought along children any younger than thirteen or fourteen – when girls, at least, were considered old enough for a night of dancing – but as it was only about a quarter to four in the afternoon the Ainsley children were abroad. Six-year-old Charlie was standing with his hands behind his back, solemnly talking to elderly Mr. Huxton, and through the broad, open doors Cullen could see Leon and Daisy up on the first landing, peering through the banister posts to watch the guests arriving while a pristinely-starched Negro nursemaid stood watch over them. The baby would be in the nursery with her mammy, scarcely aware of the bustle below.

Charity, nearly nine, stood near her father in a flounced party dress, her pale hair done up in ringlets and held in place by pink velvet ribbons. She was trying to maintain a young lady's dignity while obviously bursting with excitement. Cullen took off his hat and approached her, bowing courteously.

"Afternoon, Miss Charity," he said.

She bobbed a tidy curtsy. "Afternoon," she said with practiced politeness. Then she looked up at his face and her eyes widened. "It's you!" she yipped, forgetting her manners in her astonishment.

"Yes, it's me," said Cullen, considerably amused. He had been a regular visitor in her home all her life, up until the demands of the last ten months had left him little time for calling. Had she been born a boy, he would have stood up at her christening as he had done for her brother. Yet she was looking at him as she had done on the day he came about the wheel: as if he were some strange exotic animal that at once frightened and fascinated her. "There something you been wanting to ask me, Miss?"

"Miss Greta Trussell says you been picking your own tobacco!" Charity exclaimed. Then she flushed, conscious that she had not quite managed to meet the standards of ladylike discretion.

"No," said Cullen, shaking his head and grinning.

"No?" said Charity.

"No; it's too early in the year. Tobacco don't get picked until October," said Cullen. "But I have been out there working it. This time of year we got to pull the suckers: little leaves growing off the big ones and sapping their strength. You ever had a good look at a tobacco plant?"

"No," she said, looking uncertain.

Cullen sidestepped to allow a pair of middle-aged matrons clear passage into the house, bowing and offering a polite greeting as they passed him. Neither acknowledged it, but as soon as they were through the door their heads fell together in a conspiratorial and notably scandalized way. The first of many, he guessed, but there was no point in trying to hide the truth – not from them, and certainly not from the child.

"Well, you have your pappy bring you over to call some day and I'll show you one," he said, turning back to her.

Charity smoothed the flounces of her frock and tilted her head thoughtfully. "I don't know…" she said. "You goin' pick cotton, too?"

"Naw, I don't grow no cotton," said Cullen. Charity seemed almost as shocked by this as by the fact he worked his own land. To a child whose entire world was built on cotton it was surely inconceivable that anyone could exist apart from it.

"Ain't you a gentleman no more, Mr. Bohannon?" she asked thoughtfully, head now canted so far to one side that her left bunch of curls was pooling on her broad lace collar.

Cullen gave every appearance of considering the question carefully. "Well now, Miss Charity," he said; "I still mind the Commandments, and use a napkin at the supper table. I got the same manners I always had; I can read and write and cipher with the best of 'em; I know how to dance and ride and shoot and hold my spirits; I'm a good husband to my wife and I keep my darkies housed and fed. I own a thousand acres just past them woods, and I ain't afraid to do work that needs doing to keep it. You tell me whether that makes me a gentleman or not."

She frowned, deeply pensive and not a little puzzled. "But a gentleman don't work in the fields," she protested uncertainly. "Only poor white trash and niggers do that."

"Charity!" Verbena gasped, swooping in amid a flurry of hoops to seize her daughter's shoulder. "You mustn't say such things, and to your father's good friend, too! Apologize to Mr. Bohannon at once."

"No need of that, ma'am," said Cullen, glancing at the woman and then turning gentle eyes on the girl, who looked at once mortified and bewildered. He had been talking to her like she had some sense, and here was her mother suddenly scolding her like a baby. "Miss Charity, what I'm trying to get at is that it don't much matter what work a gentleman does, so long as he's a good honest man and takes care of his people. You think about it; you'll see what I mean."

Verbena was looking at him as if he had suddenly put a hollowed-out watermelon rind on his head, but Charity nodded. "Yassir," she said. "I'll think 'bout it."

"Now run along and stay out of trouble," her mother admonished in a low but very stern voice. "And say 'darkie' or 'Negro', dear: only unrefined people say 'nigger'."

A look of protest came to Charity's eyes, and Cullen thought he knew what she was going to say, but he'd already let the girl make enough trouble for herself. "Why don't you go and see how your grandpappy's doing, Miss Charity? He might need a pretty young lady to keep him company."

She shot him a tiny grateful glance and took the escape, retreating into the house and away from her mother's disapproving eyes. Verbena watched her go and sighed. "You must forgive her, Mr. Bohannon," she said. "I try and I try to teach that child good manners, but they just don't seem to take. We shall have to get her a good strict governess this winter, I fear. Boyd indulges her so."

"She's still young," said Cullen affably. "And I bet she ain't the only girl 'round here would like to ask me a question or two about my labor situation; she's just the only one brave enough to do it."

"I'm afraid you might find that's not true," Verbena said. "I have been trying to get people to talk about something else – anything else – but aside from politics I fear you're the only matter of interest." She smoothed her skirt with hands that clearly wanted to fidget instead. "If I might suggest it, Mr. Bohannon, perhaps you could be… well, a little less frank about your misfortunes?"

This was something he had not expected, and Cullen found himself smiling wryly. Verbena was ashamed to have him under her roof, particularly in the presence of all the county. She didn't want to receive him: she was only doing it out of deference to her husband. She didn't want him here, and he didn't much want to be here, either: they were both just tolerating this arrangement because Boyd, for all his quiet ways, had a knack for getting what he wanted. Cullen arched his eyebrows and said in his most deferential manner; "Now, ma'am, I ain't one to shy from the truth. I'd sooner folks hear it from me than third-hand on the gossip telegraph. I don't see that I got anything to be ashamed of: it ain't a crime to own less than ninety slaves, after all. You'll excuse me, Miss Verbena: I think I might just go and rescue my wife."

He bowed and stepped around her, slipping between elbows and hoopskirts to the far side of the broad veranda. Verbena's rapid retreat to scold her daughter had left Mary at the mercy of Greta Trussell and Mrs. Graham, who were engaged in an in-depth genealogical study in which a non-native could not hope to participate. Mary was nodding politely and making the appropriate interested responses, but there was a desperate light in her eyes that flared into relief when Cullen slipped up beside her.

"There you are, my dear," he said, taking her hand and placing it on his arm as though she was not yearning to do just that. "I'm sorry to spirit you away from your friends, but I did want to introduce you to Boyd's cousin Ernest and his wife."

"Oh," said Mary. "Well yes, if you insist. Do excuse me, Mrs. Graham. Excuse me, Greta. I hope we shall find time to continue this discussion later."

The women made the requisite replies, but Cullen was already steering Mary through the crowd and towards the front doors. "Thank you," she whispered as they stepped from the painted porch floor onto the polished parquet. "Where is Boyd's cousin Ernest?"

"I ain't got the slightest idea," said Cullen, handing off his hat to the housemaid waiting for that purpose just over the threshold. "He's bound to be around here somewhere: he only lives over by Why Not, and he was the other wrangler at the wedding."

"Wrangler?" said Mary.

"You know," said Cullen. "The men who wrangle the bridegroom into his best suit and see he gets to the wedding mostly sober, then stand up next to him so he don't bolt. In Boyd's case, me and Cousin Ernest. Though I might not have been much help with the 'mostly sober' business."

"Oh, dear," said Mary, but she was smiling. "I'll be delighted to meet him, I'm sure."

"I don't much care if you do," said Cullen. "It just looked like you needed someone to get you away from them peahens. I know women like to talk 'bout that sort of stuff, but it can't be much fun if you don't know who they're talking about." He did not venture the opinion that the women had chosen that topic specifically so that his wife might be excluded, in the thin hope that it had not occurred to Mary.

"Who _were_ they talking about?" she sked in a voice so incidentally conversational that Cullen laughed.

"There he is!" a loud voice called from the direction of the dining room door. Cullen turned to see Garland Wheeler beckoning to him. He was standing with the youngest of the Ives boys and a tall man whom Cullen did not know. "Bohannon! Come over here and settle this for us."

He glanced at Mary, but she was smiling her consent, and they drew near to the small group. The three men exchanged swift, awkward sidelong looks: they had not expected Mary to follow. "What can I do for you?" asked Cullen.

"Afternoon, Miz Bohannon," Wheeler said. "Beg pardon; I don't like to bore you."

"It's quite all right," said Mary sweetly, tightening her hold on her husband's arm almost imperceptibly. Cullen settled his free hand over hers, regretting the layers of silk and kid leather that separated their skin. "Unless of course you gentlemen were hoping to discuss me?"

"No, ma'am," said Wheeler, shifting uncomfortably. "We sure didn't intend to do that."

"What exactly was it you were wanting?" asked Cullen, somewhat irritated by this sudden reluctance and especially by the way that the men were refusing to meet Mary's eyes.

Ives exhaled through his nose. "I know my ma wanted to see you, Mrs. Bohannon," he said. "She's in the front parlor with the other ladies if you'd care to…"

Cullen's sharp remark was cut off by Mary's smile. "How lovely," she said graciously. "Will you excuse me, dearest? I haven't had a chance to visit with Mrs. Ives in such a long while."

She was simply making a graceful exit: Mrs. Ives was twice her age and an abominable bore. But Cullen could scarcely say this in public, much less in front of the woman's son, and so he smiled and nodded. "I'll come find you in a bit," he promised.

"Enjoy yourself," Mary instructed. She curtseyed graciously. "Do please excuse me, gentlemen." Then she sailed off, a sapphire butterfly in her shimmering silks, and vanished into the sedate shadows of the front parlor.

"What do you want?" Cullen said again, not quite able to disguise his displeasure.

Wheeler looked at the third man, who had his hands in his pockets now. Ives was looking anywhere but at his friend. Realizing that no one else was going to take the initiative, Garland said; "It's just politics. We had us a bit of a disagreement on the merits of Bell for president."

Cullen frowned, and Ives squirmed. "And my wife couldn't hear you say that? I don't take kindly to folks making Mary feel unwelcome, Garland: you ought to know that."

"Don't be like that," said Wheeler, scratching the back of his neck. "Women ain't interested in the next president: it don't hardly affect them at all."

"You could still be polite," said Cullen. "She would be, interested or not. What's this about Bell? I never took you for voting Whig."

"I ain't," said Wheeler. "It's John who's got the fool notion he might be the one to steady the ship of state."

Ives flushed a little. "He ain't a Whig no more. And I don't pretend he got all the answers, but if he can keep the Yankees off our backs without breaking up the country…" He gestured vaguely. Clearly the spark had gone out of the conversation.

"To be honest, boys, I ain't given it much thought one way or the other," said Cullen. "I'm flattered you'd want my opinion, but the most I can say is that the Vice President's got a hard race to run. Why else you think Buchanan ain't trying for a second term? It'd be nothing but an invitation to a humiliating defeat." He looked at the three men thoughtfully. "Now you goin' tell me why my wife couldn't hear that?"

Now Ives was almost crimson. "Well… she's a Republican, ain't she? From New York?"

This assumption was almost unworthy of comment, but Cullen limited himself to a low, contemptuous chuckle. "Mary might be from New York, but she ain't a Republican," he said. "She's a lady, remember? They ain't interested in politics: it don't hardly affect them at all."

The third man laughed, and Wheeler grinned sheepishly to hear his own words thrown back at him. Ives seemed to breathe a little easier as Garland clapped Cullen on the arm.

"Fair enough," he said. "But she really ought to be spending time with the other ladies, not trailing around bored just so she can adorn your arm like that." He turned to the stranger and added; "Bohannon married up the most beautiful Yankee he could find and brung her back here to make the rest of us jealous."

"I don't believe we've been introduced," said Cullen, nodding to the man. "Cullen Bohannon. I own the plantation just west of here."

"Jim Secrest; pleasure to meet you," said the stranger. "Down visiting from Kemper County. Got me a little law practice out of Scooba."

"Lawyer," said Cullen thoughtfully. "How do you know Boyd Ainsley?"

"Oh, he ain't a client, if that's what you're asking," said Secrest. "Truth is I don't know him at all, apart from the very cordial words we exchanged out front."

"Jim's my guest," said Ives. "Spent a year at the college together, 'til I got expelled over that business with the pistols."

"Well I guess that makes you the successful one, then, seeing as you finished," Cullen said. He offered his hand to Secrest, who shook it amiably.

"Cullen's the one everybody's been whispering about," said Garland with a remarkable lack of tact. "He had a bit of a sparring match with the wrong neighbor, and now word's gone 'round that he's working his own tobacco."

"I thought you said you owned a plantation," said Secrest, looking in puzzlement at Cullen's well-kept suit of clothes and silver watch chain.

"I do," said Cullen. "A thousand acres of prime planting land. But I only got five Negroes to work the place, and sometimes a man's got to get his hands dirty."

"Five Negroes on a thousand acres?" Secrest mused. "You'll forgive me, not being what you'd call landed gentry myself, but that don't seem adequate."

"It ain't," said Cullen cheerfully. "We manage all right, though."

"There used to be fifty," Wheeler explained unnecessarily. "But there was some unfortunate business about ten years ago. Bad debts, wasn't it, Cullen?"

"That was my father's time," said Cullen. "I'm just the one who didn't have the foresight to sell up what was left of the family investments before the panic in '57."

Secrest grimaced in sympathy. "Bad business," he said. "My senior partner lost just about all he had; wound up selling out to me at a rock-bottom price and taking his wife out West."

"Not Kansas, I hope," said Ives.

"Naw: California. Fastest growing state in the Union, so they say." Secrest studied Cullen's face thoughtfully. "So is that why you don't aim to give Breckenridge your vote?" he asked. "On account of the panic?"

Cullen smiled, a little slyly. "Now, I never said I wasn't giving him my vote," he corrected. "I said he got a hard race to run. I told you: I ain't given the election much thought, and I ain't made up my mind yet."

"Cullen don't make up his mind 'til he gives a matter serious thought," said Wheeler soberly; "unless you get 'im mad enough."

Ives laughed, but Secrest only smiled politely. He had a sidelong, tolerant look on his face that seemed to be concealing some irritation with his school friend's choice of companion. Cullen decided that he liked him.

"So you married a Northern lady, and you're not ashamed to admit to doing an honest day's work, Mr. Bohannon," Secrest said. "Seems you're something of an anomaly."

"I don't know 'bout that," said Cullen. "Just doing what got to be done."

At this Wheeler chortled uproariously: so loudly, in fact, that the darkie approaching with a tray of iced drinks balked a little. "What got to be done," he parroted. "You saw his wife, Secrest: wouldn't you say a Yankee like that got to be married up straight off, before somebody else took the opportunity?"

That was the second time Wheeler had intimated that he was coveting Mary, and Cullen would have liked to have set him straight on no uncertain terms, but he was here under the auspices of his closest friend and he didn't want to shame Boyd more than necessary. He grinned and said with measured politeness; "Well, we can't all find a lady like Gloria so quick, can we?"

Garland colored. He and Gloria had been rushed into wedlock in under a month: a near-scandal in a county where engagements routinely lasted six months or more. That the anticipated seven-month baby had not appeared after all had done little to mute county speculation about the cause of such haste. From keeping his ear to the ground instead of the gossips Cullen knew the marriage had been hurried on because of business concerns between Gloria's father and Wheeler's, but that was hardly less embarrassing. Generally the planters liked to pretend that money didn't concern them at all – when in fact, whether they admitted it or not, their lives were just as driven by their wealth as those of the New England industrialists they scorned. The one mercy in lacking money even for necessities was that Cullen couldn't really be ruled by it.

"Tell me more about the lawyering business," he said, shifting the conversation onto terrain familiar to the stranger as he wished the local ladies were well-bred enough to do for Mary. "I always had an admiration for my classmates who could study up on that sort of thing: took a patience I ain't got, I'm afraid."

"Did you go to the College, then?" asked Secrest.

"No, we ain't Baptist. Pappy got it in his head to send me out to Alabama instead," said Cullen. "He did want to ship me off to Charleston, where my mama's folks was from, but I won that fight. What sort of law do you see in Scooba? Can't be much business work."

"Not much," said Secrest. "I do chiefly land sales and probate. And I…" He cleared his throat. "I do a bit of defense work when the occasions arise. Criminal defense, you understand."

"Took up for that trapper in Kemper County that was harboring runaways," Ives said with a shamefaced shrug. "I told you, Jim: don't matter what they pay you, some cases a gentleman just didn't ought to take."

"Man's got a right to a lawyer if he's called up in court," said Cullen. "Means somebody's got to do it."

"Not like he got off anyhow," said Ives, grinning and clapping his friend on the shoulder. He looked around at the ebb and flow of people in the entryway. "I got a powerful thirst that lemonade don't answer. Think Ainsley would mind if we raided his liquor cupboard?"

"They've got the good stuff laid out in the library," said Wheeler, nodding in the appropriate direction. "So as not to distress the ladies, you understand."

"You coming, Jim?" asked the younger man. "You ain't gone Temperance, have you?"

"No, but I got to pace myself," said Secrest. "You go on; I'll be fine right here."

Cullen very much wanted a good strong drink, but he had had enough of the company. "Sounds good," he said. "You can finish telling me all about that practice of yours."

_*discidium*_

Mary was sitting on a chaise longue in the sumptuous front parlor, listening courteously but without much interest to the matronly gossip around her. It was expected for Southern ladies, upon donning the stately mantle of marriage, to retire into flocks and regale one another with endless anecdotes about birthing, child-rearing, pedigree and death. With these, of course, came the requisite discussions on fashion, but the Southern approach to this subject was different from that of Mary's old circle in New York. Where Northern ladies seemed eager to discuss adventurous new innovations and their merits, the Southern wives were more interested in rigid enforcement of the codes of dress accompanying maidenhood, motherhood, and mourning – and the various violations they witnessed in their daily lives. Looking about her Mary could at least be assured that her own gown was quite in keeping with local notions of propriety: darker in color, modest in cut, with her bare arms softened by the artful drapings. It was a comfort to know that she would not be the favorite topic at the next county do, at least not for her clothing.

She had the feeling that they all very much wanted to discuss the matter of the Bohannon fortunes, but they could hardly indulge that wish while she was in the room. Mary had a sharp pair of eyes, and she had not missed the glances she and Cullen had received on the veranda, nor the stir about her husband as he had held a very frank discussion with little Charity Ainsley. The present conversation had wandered away from managing one's sons at that awkward age between boyhood and courtship into one that touched quite near the issue of the scion of a fine old local family actually doing his own farm labor and yet was far more uncomfortable to Mary than that ever could have been: the managing of one's slaves.

"There's no use for it," said silver-haired Mrs. Ives, shaking her head regretfully. "No use for it at all. I tried it, my dear: for _years _I tried it. But you just can't use reason on a field hand, Sarah. They haven't the capacity for reason."

Sarah White, who was only just nineteen and newly married, flapped her fan distractedly. "But I thought if I was gracious and simply explained why it wasn't acceptable—"

"That's no good," said Mrs. Trussell. "You're only wasting your time. They haven't got much more sense than horses. It isn't as if you were dealing with a _house_ darkie, dear. They're a far more intelligent sort; far more… convivial. Why just the other day I said to our Joan – it was Joan, wasn't it, Greta dear?"

Greta Trussell, though unmarried, had recently been relegated to the matrons' circle, confirming her status as an old maid. Mary thought it was a shame. In New England Greta would not have been considered beyond a marriageable age, particularly for an older bachelor or a widower, but in Lauderdale County it seemed she was written off at twenty-six. She shook her head. "Polly, Mama. It was Polly."

"Oh, yes, Polly. I said to our Polly, 'If you treat others with courtesy, you will be courteously used yourself', and do you know, I think she understood just what I meant! Anyhow she said she did and she turned a pretty curtsey. In another year or two we'll have her trained to serve tea in the morning room." Mrs. Trussell smiled in a most satisfied manner. "And to think her father wasn't anything but a mule-driver. You just never can tell which ones might show promise. But field hands, really. Sarah, you must not even try to gentle them. Leave that to your overseer: that's what he's paid for after all."

"I don't like him," said Sarah, violating one of the sacred precepts of Southern courtesy and speaking her mind. Mary did a wary sweep of the room, looking to see who had missed this slip and who was now disapproving of the poor child. "I wish that George would dismiss him and find another who wasn't so brutal."

"From the sound of things you need a brutal one, child," said Mrs. Ives. "Some Negroes just have to have a firm hand."

Mary looked down at her gloves, brilliantly white against her skirt, and wished she had not come in here at all. She had wanted to spare Cullen the embarrassment of having his wife hanging on his arm when his peers had all tucked theirs neatly out of sight, but she might have gone out into the rose garden, or back onto the porch where Boyd and Verbena were still receiving late-arriving guests. It even would have been preferable to wander among the young people, where she certainly did not belong, than to sit here and listen to this. Her conscience, soothed in her own home where Cullen worked side-by-side with Nate and Elijah and Lottie played so peacefully with Gabe and dear old Bethel took care of them all, was gouging her now as she listened to her neighbors. She was sheltered by her reduced circumstances from the uglier truths of slavery, but at times like this she could not ignore them.

"I understand that," said Sarah. "But Mr. Porter does seem to take it too far. One of the boys was caught filling his pockets with string beans while he was meant to be picking them, and he whipped him for it. _Whipped _him with a carriage-whip. Just for taking a few beans."

"Oh, you can't let those things slide by, dear," said Mrs. Fielder, who at forty had the ramrod spine and stern demeanor of a cavalry sergeant. "Stealing food is a serious business; you let them think you're soft on it now, in five years you'll be bankrupt. Trust me, child: I was young when I took charge of Mr. Fielder's plantation, and it took more than one beating before some of those black bucks would obey me."

"But we never had to whip our darkies at home," Sarah protested unhappily.

"That's because your mother, God bless her, knows her way around a Negro," Mrs. Fielder declared. "She may be the gentlest lady in the county, but I never saw one for getting what she wanted out of a slave. Just a smile and a quiet word, and they jump to her bidding. That's a particular talent, Sarah, and if you haven't got it you'll just have to manage like the rest of us."

"It is hard to find a good overseer, though," said Helen Scarborough. She was about Mary's age, and spoke up in a voice a little louder than necessary and too deliberately regretful. She was trying to take up for Sarah without actually assuming any personal risk. "You know we lost ours to the railroad last month: Davey's been trying to replace him, but it seems everyone he tries is either inept or dishonest."

"What about you, Mary dear? What do you do about your overseer?" asked Mrs. Trussell. "I don't imagine Mr. Bohannon would have just anyone riding his acres."

Mary looked up, startled at being so directly addressed after sitting all-but-ignored for the last twenty minutes. The older woman was smiling sweetly and gave every appearance of waiting for an earnest answer. Mary turned up the corners of her mouth, her heart in her throat, and said; "Why, Mrs. Trussell, we haven't any overseer. We haven't had one all the time I've been married. As you say, my husband is far too particular to have either a thief or a brute riding his acres or troubling his people."

"Oh, yes, of course," said Mrs. Trussell, all syrupy politeness and cool Southern charm. "He prefers a more… hands-on approach, doesn't he?"

Several of the younger women tittered, and Mary felt her spine straightening so stiffly that the top of her corset dug in under her shoulder blades. "I can't say how things are done on your plantations, of course," she said, looking around her; "but on ours no one would think of beating one of the darkies. I think you're quite right, Sarah, to try to talk to your field hand if he's misbehaving, and I'm certain your mother would advise you to do just the same. Cullen says that if you haven't got a slave's respect you'll never get it with a whip."

She got to her feet, rising sedately so that her skirts scarcely rustled. "I'm going to go and pay my respects to the elder Mr. Ainsley, I think. Sarah, would you care to join me?"

The girl's eyes widened at this, and she looked around at the other women. Some were averting their eyes from the spectacle of the Yankee interloper deflecting the poorly veiled insults of one of the county's most formidable dames, but more were watching Mary very coldly indeed. For a moment Sarah seemed torn, but she also knew that the moment Mrs. Bohannon was no longer the center of attention the crows would start pecking at her again.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Bohannon, I think I would," she said with careful formality. "I've been wanting to offer the old gentleman my greetings, and have not yet had the opportunity."

She rose, a little gawky still with the clumsiness of adolescence that even the most devoted of mothers could not wholly expunge before its time, and Mary put a companionable arm about her slender waist, guiding her to the parlor door. She kept her head high and her expression placid, and kept walking smoothly across the grand vestibule as behind her scandalized murmuring erupted among the outraged ladies.

"You're very kind," Sarah breathed when they were well past the foot of the grand staircase. "I know I never should have said that about Mr. Porter, not in company. Mother would be so ashamed!"

"From what I know of your mother, she'd be more ashamed of the story about the boy in the garden," said Mary quietly. "How old was he?"

"Fourteen, I think," said Sarah. "Or thirteen? I don't know: there are so many of them I can never keep everyone straight."

"Why do you think he did it?" asked Mary. "Pocketed them, I mean."

Sarah sighed. "It's because I don't know how to manage my darkies," she recited as if by rote. "George's aunt always says the same thing."

Mary had forgotten about elderly Miss White – the county's other prominent old maid. She would have lost her position as mistress of Nightingale Plantation with her nephew's marriage, and doubtless resented the young usurper. "I don't believe that," said Mary kindly; "but I do know how challenging it is even just to manage a small household. Have you thought perhaps the boy took those beans because he was hungry?"

Sarah looked at her, somewhat startled. They were under the shelter of the stairs now, and Mary guided the girl down onto an upholstered bench set just where there was enough clearance to accommodate a sitter. She spread her own skirts gracefully, but Sarah dropped down like a stone and her hoops billowed. She looked as though the possibility had never occurred to her before.

"Auntie White says that slaves ought to be kept a little hungry," she said leadenly. "She says it keeps them limber."

"I see," said Mary, her voice very soft. "Is that how your mother does things?"

"No," Sarah confessed, hanging her head. "Mother says you wouldn't let a good horse go hungry, or a hunting hound or a stud bull, and a grown slave is worth a great deal more money." She looked up at Mary helplessly. "But Auntie says it's how things have always been done at Nightingale, and I'm don't mean to get above my place…"

"You're the mistress of the house, aren't you?" asked Mary. "It _is_ your place to decide how things are done, and especially to make sure all your people are fed. That's how I spend most of my day: planning and preparing and measuring – and yes, helping in the garden, as I'm sure everyone's been speculating – to be sure no one goes hungry. I can't imagine it's much different for your mother, except that she's got a hundred people to feed instead of eight. Do you know what I would do in your place, Sarah?"

The girl shook her head, but her expression was one of avid, almost desperate attentiveness.

"First thing tomorrow morning I would talk to your cook. You've got a good, capable cook, haven't you?" Sarah nodded, and Mary went on. "Ask her how much food she thinks you ought to give out so that everyone has a decent ration and no one gets hungry enough to steal. Tell her you want to see that your people are well fed. Then you give them what they need. They'll be healthier, and happier, and they may even work better. Why, it wouldn't surprise me if that field hand was out of temper because he hasn't been getting enough to eat."

"But Auntie…" Sarah protested indistinctly.

"Never mind her," advised Mary. "Everyone knows your mother runs the most orderly plantation in the county: you do as she would do, and not what Miss White says."

"What about the expense?" asked Sarah. "George won't like that."

"I'll tell you what," said Mary. "I'll have Cullen put a word in George's ear tonight after supper. Just about all the young men respect his opinion."

Sarah's white shoulders slumped a little in relief. "Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bohannon. I do so want to be a great lady, but sometimes it seems I don't quite know how."

"I wouldn't worry about that either, dear," Mary said. "About trying to be a great lady, I mean. Just start by being a good one, and taking care of your people. You may find they start wanting to take care of you."

Sarah giggled a little, flushing crimson. "That's Yankee talk, Mrs. Bohannon," she said, but not spitefully.

"Yes it is," Mary declared. "But I think it makes more sense to you than what those old women were saying back there, doesn't it?"

Sarah nodded timidly, and Mary patted her hand, small and neat in a new silk glove. "And I do think you might call me Mary," she said in a conspiratorial tone. "Since we've braved Mrs. Trussell's displeasure together."

"I will," Sarah promised earnestly. "I will, _Mary_."

"That's settled, then," said Mary. She stood up again, stepping out from under the stairs. Cullen, she noticed, was leaning against the post of the dining room door, deep in conversation with a tall man she did not recognize. He seemed content enough, and she hoped it was not merely an affectation of courtesy. "I truly do want to go and say good afternoon to Mr. Ainsley, though. I fear he must get lonely at gatherings like this. Are you coming?"

Sarah nodded and stood up, her red gown shimmering in the afternoon sun that poured through the splendid windows. Arm in arm like old friends, the two ladies went through to the back parlour.


	18. The Gentlemen's Repose

**Chapter Eighteen: The Gentlemen's Repose**

The custom after supper was for the ladies to withdraw, while the men remained around the table to enjoy their spirits and talk. At the Ainsley house, however, the enormous dining room with its two great cut-glass chandeliers also served as a ballroom. Therefore guests of both sexes arose immediately after the meal and separated in the grand entryway: the ladies to retreat to one or another of the parlors, and the men to take their leisure and their liquor in the library.

This allowed the Bohannons, who had been seated at opposite sides of the table six places offset from one another, a brief moment of reunion among the throng of swaying skirts and ambling, satiated men. Mary was waiting at the dining room door for Cullen when he finally reached it after standing attendance behind elderly Mrs. Platt as she levered herself out of her chair by means of the table edge and her ivory-headed cane. Her silk glove was on his arm almost before he realized his wife was beside him.

"Did you enjoy your meal, my dear?" he asked in the voice of ritual courtesy.

"It was sumptuous," said Mary, but her eyes were wandering to his wrists, which had been lately concealed once more by the dark kid gloves. "What did you do to your hands?" she whispered.

Cullen's fingers curled reflexively in towards his palm, suddenly ablaze once more with the burning itch he had been managing so well to ignore. "Not bad, is it?" he said. "Got just about all the stains out."

"But they're red," Mary murmured, a gentle mask of a smile on her lips. "I could see from down the table how sore they are."

"They ain't sore," he fibbed. Table etiquette required that a gentleman remove his gloves to eat, though ladies were under no such compulsion and almost always remained gloved. In the interest of appearing to have clean hands – for actually _having_ clean hands that were stained in dark streaks from tobacco tar was not considered adequate – he had soaked them in a little turpentine while Mary was upstairs dressing. It had worked better than he had hoped, save that his skin was now covered in livid red blotches that stung and, above all, itched maddeningly. Socially, it was preferable to the perpetually grubby look of the tobacco stains. As a matter of personal comfort, it was not.

They were coming to the point of separation, and he smiled at his wife. "Just another hour or so and we can get you dancing," he said.

Mary flushed prettily. She was a wonderful dancer and he knew how she missed it. "You won't forget, will you?" she asked very softly. "About Mr. White?"

"Course not," said Cullen, bowing in to brush his lips decorously against her cheek. She withdrew her arm from his and was whisked away in the tide of hoopskirts flowing towards the parlor.

Cullen would have watched her go; the bob of the cascading auburn curls and the ethereal sway of the skirts. But someone nudged him along and he found himself drawn off by the other current, this one all lean limbs and fine evening coats, into Boyd's sanctum.

Beyond the pass of the doorway the men fanned out through the room. Small groups gathered by the tall shelves, bringing out gilt cigar cases or admiring the exotic curios beside them. The older gentlemen took the chairs by the fireplace, which was laid with the smallest of blazes despite the heat of the evening because there was nothing less hospitable than an empty hearth. Benches had been brought in from the garden and set along the spine of the room, and some men settled on these or else stood with one leg up on the seat, leaning languidly. The sideboard was covered in crystal decanters: port and gin, brandy and Caribbean rum and numerous varieties of whiskey. There was ice water and tonic for mixing, and a large pitcher of fresh lemonade out of courtesy to guests who might embrace the Temperance movement. There were few of these in Southern society, where the ability to hold one's liquor was prized only a little less than the ability to hold one's seat in the saddle. More common were men like old Mr. Washburn, whose heart troubles had led Doctor Whitehead to place a ban upon strong spirits. Cullen's own father had been under a similar embargo in the last year or two of his life, and he had never failed to bemoan the loss of this most gentlemanly of pleasures.

The liquor board was crowded and Cullen did not much feel like jostling with half the county, so he moved to the smaller table by the long sofa which was laid with a silver coffee service. He poured himself a delicate china cupful and stirred in a liberal spoonful of sugar – best white granulated sugar, and not the sorghum he had been making do with at home. A dose of coffee would do him no harm at all. He thought he had taken about three glasses of Boyd's excellent French wine; it was difficult to tell because the slaves waiting at table did not allow anyone's glass to fall more than half-empty. Whatever the case he was already beginning to feel the warm glow of alcohol in his blood. He took a swallow of the coffee and relished the pure, strong taste without a hint of the tang of cheap sweetening.

It was a night of luxuries, and no mistake. The table had been laid with only the customary fare for such a gathering, but after months of the simple diet of bread, biscuits, hominy, salt pork and sweet potatoes, with preserved fruit and pickled vegetables only now being replaced with the bounty of the garden, Cullen had been a little overwhelmed. There had been both young roast pig and lamb to choose from, along with an assortment of game fowl and roasted chicken as well; chickens executed in their prime, and not when they were old and stringy and no longer able to lay. There had been terrapin soup, oysters in rich sauces, and two kinds of fish. Accompanying these had been a vast assortment of vegetable dishes: Irish potatoes prepared in four different ways; carrots in a heavy cream sauce; fresh greens in pot liquor; every variety of fresh food the West Willows gardens could offer, bright in their silver salvers and seasoned with herbs both home-grown and exotic. A dish of peppers, not much larger than gold pieces and stuffed with some sort of confection made with early tomatoes, had been particularly enticing. Then of course there were the breads: biscuits and fine, crusty rolls, corn muffins and hotcakes. And butter in great quantities, not only plain but whipped with garlic, or honey, or herbs. There was cheese, hard and soft, and further choice in each of these. And great trays of fruit: strawberries laid out in bouquets, and blackberries and blueberries stewed in sherry, and watermelon cleaned of its seeds and pared down to be eaten with a small dessert fork. There had even been a plate of delicate orange slices, almost unobtainable so late in the year and doubtless brought in at great expense from abroad.

After all this had been cleared away, the sweet course had been served: cakes and pastries and tarts, peach and berry cobblers and marzipan shaped and painted cleverly, blancmange and syllabub. It was impossible to taste it all, of course, but the sheer extravagance of choice was a treat in itself. The simple luxury of being able to pass up a dish he did not care for without sacrificing a necessary nourishing element of the meal left Cullen quietly dazed. And, for the first time in recent memory, he had been able to eat his fill without fretting that today's indulgence might contribute to tomorrow's famine.

He had been too intent upon his own plate and upon entertaining his seating companions – Mrs. Platt on the left and the effervescent young Miss Felicity Ives on the right – to note what Mary had been eating, but he earnestly hoped that she too had savored the splendid meal. Certainly she had been lucky (or Verbena had been kind) in her company at table. She had been flanked by Doc Whitehead, who was attentive and courteous and liked her a great deal, and Cullen's new acquaintance from Kemper County. The longer he had talked with Jim Secrest, the better Cullen had liked him: he was a sensible man and free from many of the pretentions of the idle planters' sons. They had talked quite extensively about ethics and the law, and Secrest had some interesting thoughts on the raging debate over states' rights and the duty to the Union. Then they had fallen to talking about horses. As it turned out Secrest himself was an accomplished rider, even by Mississippi standards, and knew a thing or two about good horseflesh. He had also caught sight of the Bohannons' arrival, and had a number of eager questions about Pike and Bonnie. Cullen, for whom his team was a source of great pride, had been only too happy to answer.

He was cornered now by Garland Wheeler and several other young married men near the fireplace, nodding and commenting upon what appeared to be yet another energetic political debate. Cullen tried briefly to catch the lawyer's eye, but Secrest was clearly engaged. Finishing with his coffee, he deposited the empty cup on a tray near the door. Those house servants who were not occupied in cleaning up after the meal or in removing the chairs and pushing aside the great table to prepare the dining room for dancing were serving tea and coffee and dainty helpings of sherry to the ladies in the parlors. Only Matthew in the splendor of his best suit of clothes intruded upon the ease of the gentlemen, and he did so with such practiced grace that he was all but invisible.

The throng about the spirits had cleared a little, and Cullen moved in to pour himself a drink. Scorning the elaborate decanters he reached for a plain glass vessel in which he knew Boyd kept the very best Scotch whiskey. He was just replacing the simple stopper when he heard a low chuckle in his ear.

"Nobody's secrets are safe from you," said Boyd, elbowing his friend amiably in the ribs.

Cullen grinned and raised his glass in salute. "I pride myself on being an observant man," he said. The laws of hospitality prohibited a man from keeping back his best liquor, but there was no rule that said he could not make it look as drab and unappealing as possible. Cullen took a mouthful and felt the fluid fire spread through his chest. "Don't worry: I won't tell anyone."

Boyd grinned and helped himself to a measure from the same vessel. "How are you enjoying yourself?" he asked. "I tried to have Verbena pair you with a belle who wasn't too empty-headed."

"Miss Felicity is charming," said Cullen neatly. He lowered his voice and added; "Though I think you chose my other companion for your own amusement instead of mine."

"Oh, I think you get just as much amusement out of it as I do," said Boyd. "I don't know how you manage to disagree with everything she says while still sounding so damned polite, but it's clearly a pleasure. You had much trouble over your business yet?"

"Not much," said Cullen. "A few long looks, if you take my meaning, but most of the young men seem to think it's worth a laugh or two. It's the women who really take exception. Can't say why: it don't harm them none."

"Maybe they're worried that you'll set a dangerous precedent," Boyd suggested as they stepped away from the sideboard and moved over to where the high windows stood open to catch the evening breeze. "Cullen Bohannon works his own tobacco: pretty soon their husbands will be out their dirtying their hands in the cotton and the corn. Does Mary like it when you're out there?"

"She don't like it, but she knows there ain't no other way," said Cullen. "We got to get in them fifty acres, and three darkies can't do that. What did Verbena say when she heard we was planning to attend?"

"Not much, as I recall," said Boyd. "She's been busy with replies to them invitations all month. And all week she's been going through the house like a whirlwind getting ready. I swear she lives for planning this sort of do. Why?"

"Don't matter," said Cullen, taking another swallow of his drink. He felt eyes on the back of his neck and turned to catch Mr. Graham staring at him. He grinned and lifted his glass, and the older man hurriedly turned his attention back on his pipe. He was in a group of several men of the same generation: among them Abel Sutcliffe, resplendent in a suit so new that the seams were still visibly rounded. He too caught Cullen's eye, and received the same ironic salute.

"You ain't going to start anything with him?" Boyd asked uneasily.

"Hell, no," Cullen laughed. "I respect the hospitality of your house. Turning out in my best clothes with the prettiest wife in the county might go some way to disabusin' folks of the notion I'm white trash, but a fistfight on your staircase would set me right back." He swirled the amber liquid in the heavy glass. "I do hope Mary's having a pleasant time," he said.

"Verbena'll see to that," pledged Boyd. "I hear tell she's been friendly to Sarah White, too."

"I ain't seen her parents," Cullen said. The Lloyds lived at the far end of the county, but could usually be counted upon to turn out to such occasions regardless.

"Didn't you hear?" his host asked. "Andrew Lloyd took a fall from his hunter last week: broke three ribs and wrenched an ankle. He'll be all right, but he's laid up. And of course Mrs. Lloyd wouldn't think of leaving him. She's a good lady."

Cullen nodded. "I was hoping she'd be around: she always takes care to see that Mary's included. It ain't always easy for her at these things, I think. Her friends in New York weren't much like our ladies. Sometimes I think I ought to send her back home for a visit."

"Why don't you?" asked Boyd. Then he recognized the obvious and flinched. "Maybe for Christmas," he amended quietly.

"Maybe," said Cullen. "Truth is I don't much like the idea of her travelling alone, and I certainly can't spare the time to go with her. It'll be burdensome enough when I'm down in New Orleans selling up the tobacco."

"Speaking of tobacco," said Boyd, brightening; "you ain't brought none of them little cigars of yours, have you? I'd admire a taste."

Cullen grinned and reached into the inner pocket of his coat. He had indeed brought half a dozen of his homemade cigars, carefully pressed out of his own tobacco, and he drew out his worn leather case. He had possessed a silver one up until last year's Louisiana trip when, after failing to get anything like a good price for his scanty crop, he had sold it at a French Quarter jeweler's to help defray the costs of his stay. He opened the case and offered it to Boyd, who chose one of the slender rods and drew it under his nose.

"Beautiful," he said, retreating to one of the cruets of coals spread about the room for this purpose. He lit a slender taper and puffed to draw the flame into the cigar, then offered the light to Cullen so that he could ignite his own. He did so, snuffed the flame and returned the taper to the table before resuming his place by the window.

Boyd drew in a deep breath and let it out in a thin cloud of fragrant smoke. He closed his eyes in appreciation and grinned. "I swear Mississippi tobacco tastes best," he said.

"You oughta tell that to my buyers," said Cullen. "Every year they try to haggle me down because I ain't growing in the Carolinas. Gets tiresome."

The truth was that the tobacco was hardly the best, coming as it did from the ill-starred crop that was largely responsible for his present situation. Boyd was just being diplomatic – or else he didn't have much of a palate for tobacco. Cullen had to admit the latter might well be possible. Despite his thirst for world culture Boyd was in many ways an innocent.

"They're trying to catch your eye over there," he said, nodding surreptitiously towards the knot of middle-aged men around Sutcliffe. "It don't do to spend too long with one guest, especially not a guest asked out of pity."

Boyd's face crumpled in dismay. "That can't be how you see it," he said, looking hurt. "You and me been friends since we was in our mamas' arms. There ain't a single person in the world I'd rather have here tonight. Well, apart from Verbena, of course."

"It ain't how I see it," said Cullen. "It's how they see it. Covering my shame with the mantle of your spotless reputation. Go on: look after your other guests. I got to have a word with George White."

Boyd gave him a long, pained look, but moved off towards the older men. Cullen took another drag on his cigar and drained his glass, then ambled indolently over to the sideboard to pour himself another. As he reached for the unadorned decanter he wondered whether this would look like a gesture of humility: the impoverished neighbor taking the cheapest-looking stuff. He hoped it did, he thought smugly. Damned fools, all of them.

With another sip of Boyd's best whiskey to warm him, he approached the sprawling group of young husbands and restive bachelors now boasting loudly of Mississippi's spirit of self-reliance. It was this group in which Cullen was most genuinely welcomed: there weren't many among them he hadn't helped out of a scrape or two over the years, and those who had not yet been beneficiaries of his ingenuity respected him as a straightforward and upright man. As he drew near cheerful greetings were offered and two or three slapped him amiably on the shoulder blades. He grinned at their salutations, though the aching muscles of a back worn out from stooping protested the good-natured assaults. He made a couple of obligatory replies to enthusiastic statements offered up to him for approval as he moved over towards George, but did not really let himself get drawn into the conversation.

"Can you spare a few minutes?" he asked the younger man. George White was twenty-four, and really too young to be running a plantation the size of Nightingale, but an unfortunate spate of typhoid had brought him early into his inheritance. His maiden aunt had been the supreme authority on the place until his recent marriage, and now it seemed the new Mrs. White wanted to make some changes – so said Mary. Ordinarily Cullen wouldn't think of telling a neighbor how to go about his business, but his wife had a way of coaxing him to do things.

"Happy to," said George. He admired Cullen greatly, and had done since Cullen had helped him out in the matter of some undisclosed gambling debts incurred in the months after his father's death. Paying them had not been the problem: rather, George had been afraid to raise the matter with his aunt, and Cullen had stepped in to mediate. It was time to use a little of that influence, so it seemed, at Mary's request.

"Over here," said Cullen, leading the way back to the window. "Cigar?" he offered, drawing out his case again.

"Thank you." George took one and looked at it. "This your own stuff?" he asked.

"Picked and cured it myself," said Cullen, a little sardonically. George's color rose a little and the older man grinned. "Never mind, George: everyone knows. Go on and enjoy it."

George moved off to light the cigar and returned forthwith. "What can I do for you, Mr. Bohannon?" he asked.

"For starters you can quit with the 'Mr. Bohannon'," said Cullen. "Puts us on uneven footing, don't you think? Most of your friends call me Cullen, don't they?"

"Most of my friends ain't got the manners of a field hand," George grinned. "But I'll use your Christian name if it suits you. I'd do just about anything you wanted: you know that."

"I'm glad to hear it, because I wanted to have a word with you about a matter that's a mite delicate," Cullen said. "Touches on the subject of field hands, as it happens. I hear there been trouble with some of yours."

"Not trouble, exactly," said George, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Just a couple getting uppity when my wife rides by. Saying things… you know. Balking. I got Porter keeping an ear out."

"Porter. He'd be your overseer?" asked Cullen. The youth nodded. "Hmm. See, now, George, I always felt a man ought to look after his own business. When there's trouble in the fields, it's your trouble. You see what I mean?"

"I couldn't whip them myself, if that's what you're suggesting," said George hastily, his voice very low. "I know I ought to; it's a master's right. But I just can't do it. I can't hardly rap a pickaninny's knuckles, much less take a lash to a man."

This was a confession that could not be made to very many people at all, and Cullen took it as evidence of the measure of trust George was willing to put to him. He nodded thoughtfully. "I don't hold with whipping myself," he said. "A Negro that respects his master works harder than a Negro who don't, that's all there is to it. And a tore-up body don't work much at all. Neither does a hungry one, George, and that's what I wanted to say."

George was clearly puzzled. He drew on the thin cigar and then studied the glow of its tip. He shook his head and then a look of comprehension dawned on his face. "It's really got that bad, then?" he asked quietly, turning his shoulder to block their conversation from the rest of the room. "Just send your man over: you're welcome to a share of anything we got."

"What?" Cullen said sharply, quite taken aback.

"I mean it," George pledged. "Flour, salt pork, wine, anything you need. Between friends, Mr. Boh—_Cullen_. I'd be proud to help." He faltered a little at the hard, astonished look in the other man's eyes. "O-or we could settle on a price," he stammered. "I'd extend credit 'til your crop was in, of course, if you ain't comfortable taking a gift…"

"What's given you the idea I'm short of provisions?" Cullen asked, managing to keep his indignation bottled behind a slow, reasonable voice.

"Everybody says… that is, Mr. Sutcliffe been letting out as how your family's living on split peas and hominy and tonight's the first decent meal you seen in months…" George spluttered, now crimson to the roots of his indifferently brown hair.

Cullen lifted his hand hurriedly to shade his rolling eyes from general view. The urge to laugh at George's well-meaning discomfiture warred with a black rage that was now brewing in his viscera. He didn't much care if Sutcliffe spread the truth about him working in the fields. He could just about tolerate stretching the story to put about that Cullen had spit on instead of at him, because that wasn't without its funny side. But this was too much. This was nothing more than a malicious lie, and a lie that struck right to the core of a man's pride at that. Hard work was one thing: unavoidable and without shame, and even something to take pride in. But the intimation that he could not feed his family; that Mary was going hungry; that he could not provide meat for his boy – that was something he could not bear. He could not articulate just why this rumor should leave him so blind with pulsing fury; he only knew that it did.

In that instant while his irises lolled up around the underside of his sockets he felt like charging across the room and seizing Sutcliffe by the throat and shaking him until he cried for mercy. He felt like flinging the vile man down on the lush Turkish rug and beating on him with both fists. He felt like taking one of the dueling pistols down from the mantelpiece and shooting him square in the heart. But of course he could do none of these things. He was a landowner and he was a gentleman and he had been raised better than that. He might perhaps, when his temper had cooled enough that he was no longer in danger of throttling the bastard, make some cold and cutting remark about men who spread lies, but that was all. Carefully he tamped down his anger, though it seemed to be choking him, and he shook his head slowly.

"That's a filthy lie, son," he said, a little breathlessly. "We got plenty of food and I don't need your charity. Or your generosity," he added as George raised his eyes in anxious protest. "It's a kind offer and you got a good heart, but we ain't in need. Still I want you to keep in mind that spirit of giving, because my Mary been talking to Sarah, and it seems you got a problem on your plantation."

"I didn't mean… I wasn't… I didn't really believe him…" George babbled. He was trying to gesticulate, sending ash flying from the cigar in one hand and creating a very real danger of spilling his drink with the other.

"Never mind that now," Cullen said tersely. He was still trying to keep a rein on his temper, and the best way to do that was to change the subject entirely. "About your slaves. Maybe you don't know – maybe that overseer ain't told you – but you got boys stealing food while they're working the garden. Seems you know your field hands ain't content. Mary was talking to Sarah about it, and it seems your people don't get enough to eat. Miz White done told your Sarah it's good to keep a nigger hungry 'cause then he stays limber."

"Yes, that's always what Auntie says," George agreed. "We never had trouble all the years she had a hand in things. The slaves were never impudent before this year."

"Maybe that's because they didn't see much hope of getting relief," said Cullen. "But now they got a Lloyd lady in the big house, maybe they think they got a chance at a better life. You know Sarah's mama's got the best-run plantation in Lauderdale County; maybe the best-run plantation this side of the Delta. You got a wife been raised by the best manager in the state, son. A smart man would listen to what she got to say."

"Course I listen to Sarah," said George. "But Auntie been in charge of such matters since I was in short pants. I don't want her to feel pushed out."

"Can't be helped," said Cullen frankly. "There's a new mistress on the place now: she _is_ pushed out. And maybe this is a chance to do things better than they been done before. How's your discipline, apart from boys sneaking food and field hands getting uppity?"

George shrugged uncomfortably. "Could be better. We got trouble with darkies putting themselves on the sick list too often, and the far fields ain't been tended like they ought to be. Porter says he needs a freer hand, but that means more whippings and it seems to me that just makes things worse."

"That's true enough," said Cullen. "All you'll get is more folks on the sick list. Mary seems to think your problems will just go away if you feed your people better, but she ain't right about that, neither. Feed 'em up while they's ornery and you look weak."

"Then what do I do?" asked George.

"I tell you what I'd do," Cullen said thoughtfully. "You ain't been married seven months yet. You get your foremen together and you tell 'em their new mistress is looking to make some changes. Tell 'em she's got it in her head that Nightingale ought to be run more like her parents' place. Give 'em a minute to think on that."

George nodded, eyes intent on Cullen's face.

"Then you tell 'em Mrs. White thinks the first place to start is increasing their food allowance, and you aim to try it – just to please your new bride, you understand. But you expect to see a profit from it. Tell 'em everybody gets bigger rations the next two weeks, but if work don't pick up and discipline don't improve the experiment's over. Then you do it." Cullen drew a long swallow of whiskey and watched to see how this suggestion would be taken.

The younger man frowned thoughtfully. "Shouldn't I tell them if they work harder for two weeks then I'll give more food?" he asked.

Cullen shook his head. "That makes it sound like you're trying to cheat them. Give them the food straight off, but see they understand there's an expectation goes with it. And if they don't meet that expectation you got to take it away again, or they'll know you're soft and you'll never get control. And you make sure they know you're only giving them this chance on account of Miss Sarah interceding for them. Then they won't think they got the upper hand on you, and they'll take more kindly the new mistress knowing she'll take up for them. See?"

"Yes," George said. "I see… but it's bound to be expensive."

"That's why I said keep in mind that spirit of giving," said Cullen. "It'll be an outlay to start, but if they work harder and stay healthier you'll be ahead in the long run. And even if it don't work, at least you'll stop them from taunting your wife while she's out for her afternoon ride. You put it like I told you and they'll admire her regardless."

"I'll try it," George said. "Auntie ain't going to be pleased, but I'll try it."

"Good. Let me know how it turns out. And son?" Cullen said, looking up from his glass again. He fixed very stern eyes on the youth. "You hear anybody saying that I can't feed my family, and you set them straight, understand me?"

"Yassir. I will." George bobbed his head fervently. His brow knit into a parabola of worry. "Cullen, I didn't mean to shame you…"

"I ain't the one got cause to be ashamed," said Cullen, and he glared sidelong at Abel Sutcliffe. "I ain't the one spreading lies."

George shifted awkwardly, puffing at the cigar. Cullen jerked his head dismissively. "Go on: get back to your friends," he said. "Just think about what I said."

The younger man moved off, and Cullen looked out at the darkness of the rose garden beyond the windows. The fragrance of the flowers was strong on the torpid air, and the breeze for which the windows stood open had died away. Far in the distance he could hear muffled laughter and the faint twang of a banjo: Boyd's slaves making merry in the quarters after a welcome day of rest. He wondered how his own people were faring. Nate and Elijah and Meg, sore and tired after their morning's work and the half-day in the tobacco without him, would be finishing up their supper before going out to see to the stock: the men to tend the mules, and Meg to slop the hogs and milk the cows. Lottie, free at last after a busy day of helping Bethel with Gabe, would be wandering around to enjoy her brief leisure before bed. Bethel… he wasn't sure what Bethel would be doing now, at the hour in which she usually stood in the doorway of the dining room to make sure he ate his held-over supper. He felt guilty, standing here in fine clothes with a glass of excellent whiskey. That was ridiculous, he told himself. He was the master: he had a right to be idle while others worked, if only on occasion. It had never troubled him in the old days.

He emptied his glass and went over to the sideboard to pour another. Before he quite realized what he was doing he had downed it in a single draught. He poured another. Abel Sutcliffe was watching him, but Cullen did not dare to acknowledge the man's presence this time. His incandescent anger was rising again. Damn it, he might be nothing but a failing farmer, but he could feed his family!

He had just returned to his sanctuary by the window when the library door opened and a draft rustled the curtains. Cullen glanced over his shoulder to see one of the darkie footmen slip into the room and murmur something to Matthew. The valet nodded somberly, and crossed the room to wait at his master's elbow. Boyd paused in conversation to listen to him, and then grinned enormously.

"Gentlemen, the dance floor is ready!" he announced. "Shall we go and collect our charming ladies?"

This was met with general assent and a great commotion as men rose, leaving behind glasses and half-smoked cigars, tapping out pipes to tuck into coat pockets and brushing ash off of shirtfronts. Cullen hung back, nursing his whiskey and waiting for the crowd to thin a little. He lost himself for a minute or two in unsettled and incoherent thoughts, and when he drained the last of his glass he found himself in an all-but-empty room. Elderly Mr. Ainsley was sleeping in an armchair in one corner, a thin stream of spittle trickling from the paralyzed side of his mouth. And Abel Sutcliffe was standing by the back of the sofa, watching him with a cold patrician smirk on his lips.

Cullen's eyes narrowed, and he set the glass on the windowsill. Determined not to give in to the temptation to violent action, he started for the door. A cold, grinning voice stopped him.

"I haven't had the chance to pay my respects yet, Mr. Bohannon," Sutcliffe said, strolling over to stand between Cullen and his escape. "It's so nice to see you making the effort to participate in county life. I know how busy you must be."

"Not as busy as you been," said Cullen through gritted molars. "You got a wicked tongue, Abel: one of these days it's goin' get you into trouble."

"You mean it isn't true?" the older man said with a wide-eyed look of counterfeit innocence. "Well, I'm relieved to hear it. We can't have you wasting away under our very eyes, can we? And that son of yours… he's just the age to come down with rickets."

Cullen's body bolted with the urge to lunge at him, but his self-control prevented more than a slight shift of his right foot. "You keep my boy out of this," he snarled. "And you best think twice the next time you want to slander me."

"That's an empty threat, Bohannon, and we both know it," said Sutcliffe silkily. "There's not a thing you can do to hurt me. You may be popular with the young bucks, but your aptitude for politics leaves a great deal to be desired and you certainly can't _buy_ influence." He reached out one silk-gloved hand and patted Cullen's arm condescendingly. "Now why don't you go find that pretty Northern wife of yours and show her a good time before she needs to get back to scrubbing floors?"

He walked away, still sneering, and left Cullen smoldering in his wake. His hands balled into fists, slick with perspiration that clung to the leather of his gloves and stung his raw palms, he stood there quaking with rage he could not express, and cursing the chains of propriety that kept him from dealing the sanctimonious planter the blow he deserved.


	19. Dancing To and Fro

**Chapter Nineteen: Dancing To and Fro**

When the ladies rose up to rejoin their gentlemen, Mary hurriedly abandoned the overstuffed hassock on which she had been sitting and swept from the back parlor almost before Verbena could clear the way. The last hour had been almost unbearably long, and she was anxious to find her husband and get on to the real pleasure of the evening. She realized, blushing a little, that she had not so anticipated a night of dancing since she had been a girl of sixteen.

It was not discomfiture that had made the time drag. The after-supper conversation had proved far gentler and more pleasant than the earlier talk, due at least in part to the presence of the impressionable unmarried belles, who ranged in age from fourteen to no older than about twenty. They wanted to discuss their gowns and their flower gardens – well represented at temples and bosoms in the form of elaborate nosegays – and to share laughing stories of younger siblings or treasured lap dogs or beaux. They had no interest in matters of household management, genealogy or propriety, and of course good taste protected their virginal ears from tales of childbirth or illness. Those ladies above a certain age who did not feel able or willing to adapt their dialogue to the needs of the younger set had returned to the front parlor: in the back it was the maidens, the young wives, and the more spirited chaperones. Verbena had to move between the two rooms, of course: a tiresome but necessary part of a hostess's duty. Mary had been under no such obligation and was quite content to settle with a cup of scrumptious tea, the flavor of which she had almost forgotten, and enjoy the merry fluttering of the young women.

Another pleasant thing about the wholesale mixing of the wed and the courting women, which only really occurred during this hour of segregation between the sexes, was that the young girls did not seem to view Mary as a trespasser. The ladies of her own generation, now wives and mothers, had been belles in their turn when Cullen had been a charming and unattached youth, and she wondered sometimes whether they resented her for marrying their erstwhile sweetheart. Certainly Greta Trussell did, though from what Cullen said he had never shown more than a mere courteous interest. Many of the older ladies disliked her on principle simply because she was a Yankee, and she did not think her afternoon's performance would help their view of her at all. But the young girls either accepted her as simply another part of the county scenery of young matrons, or they viewed her as a genuine and fascinating curiosity. More than once Mary was approached by young ladies with earnest questions about New York and life in a metropolis. She gave generous and informative answers that seemed to delight them and encouraged them to return at whiles as their own conversations allowed it.

An awkward moment in the evening occurred when Felicity Ives, taking advantage of a peak in the volume of laughing voices, had asked Mary a shockingly unmaidenly question about her marital bed. Young Southern ladies were not meant to know such things even existed, and for a moment Mary had not known what to say. Then she had smiled and gently reminded the child that what went on between a wife and a husband ought to remain private between them. Disappointed, perhaps, at finding the Yankee woman less forthright and shameless than expected, Felicity had made a quick retreat. But Mary spent most of the rest of the hour wondering just how many of these girls were really as untouched and maidenly as they seemed. She had hardly been a model of chaste propriety in the last weeks of her own betrothal, but not even her sisters had suspected the truth. It was easy for a girl who had been brought up to present a perfect face to the world to maintain that face regardless of who might spirit her away to his suite rented rooms under cover of an afternoon flurry. Like a shimmering silk basque over an old corset, a reputation for dainty purity could fool even the sharpest eyes.

Nevertheless Mary was restless long before Verbena reappeared to announce that the dancing would begin forthwith. Now she stood near the foot of the stairs, watching the men come out of the library and pair off. Married couples were sometimes, though not always, reunited; belles were found by the young men who had arranged to lead them in to the dance. The confirmed spinsters had escorts among elderly bachelors and widowers – widowed ladies were almost never seen at such gatherings in the South, unless they were very elderly and their bereavement very distant. Doctor Whitehead, who had proved such pleasant company at dinner, paused at Mary's side. For a moment she was worried that he was without a lady to attend and might ask to lead her in. Whatever her personal desire she could not refuse such a request, both because it was socially unacceptable and because he was such a dear friend to her. But he merely smiled and patted her arm.

"Cullen's just finishing off his drink," he said. "He'll be along presently." Then he moved to offer his arm to Sarah White's formidable aunt by marriage, who had arrived in her own carriage just before supper.

As the couples formed they moved off towards the dining room, from which now came the sound of a five-piece musical ensemble tuning. There were a number of talented Negro musicians in the area, and Boyd had engaged their services for the evening. The practice was apparently common, but it struck Mary as peculiar to pay one man for the labor of another. Once she had said as much to Cullen, and he had dismissed her concerns with the declaration that it was a treat for slaves from different plantations to get together to play, and that they got their pick of the leftovers of the supper as well. That had been in their first year of marriage, when a rare day passed when they did not fall into some manner of debate over the system of slavery. Mary wondered whether he might listen more carefully to her now.

She was almost alone in the vaulted vestibule now. Boyd and Verbena were standing arm-in-arm by the dining room door, and only one other lady stood waiting for her escort. Mary's pulse quickened when she recognized the aquiline nose and pale, sallow complexion of Mrs. Sutcliffe. That almost certainly meant that Cullen was in the library with the woman's husband, alone except perhaps for old Mr. Ainsley, whom the footmen would soon be helping up to bed. The last encounter between her husband and Mr. Sutcliffe had not ended amicably, and it was the latter's tale-telling that had put the Bohannons in such an awkward social position. Mary was seized with the urge to hurry down the corridor and to burst into the room before trouble could brew between them, but of course that was unthinkable.

Her moment of panic was brief, for Mr. Sutcliffe appeared looking unscathed and unruffled, and strode to take his wife's arm. She settled against it with something like resignation in her movements and they moved towards their hosts. Mary was left alone.

Verbena looked at Boyd, who was wearing an uncomfortable expression. She touched the crook of his elbow and then slipped from his grasp. "I really must check on Mammy and Baby," she said, floating to the stairs and taking three before pausing to smile at her solitary guest. "Do excuse me, Mary dear."

She swept up the stairs, silks whispering, and because Mary was watching her go she did not notice Boyd's approach until he held out his hand. "May I have the honor of leading you into the dance, Mrs. Bohannon?" he asked.

Mary glanced back towards the library from which Cullen would surely emerge at any moment. The last thing that she wanted was for him to discover she had gone. But she could not refuse her host, and the longer they lingered out here the worse the speculation would get in the ballroom. She and Cullen might not have been missed on their own, but she doubted that: all day they had been the subject of inquisitive glances. And the absence of host and hostess would certainly be painfully obvious. "Thank you, Mr. Ainsley," she said in her sweetest voice. "I would be delighted."

Arm in arm they went to the doorway, stepping into the room like monarchs coming among the assembled court. All eyes were upon them, and Mary kept her head high and her steps smooth and decorous. Her gown rustled softly as she moved, following Boyd as he led her across the broad expanse of floor. The enormous table had been pushed against the interior wall, and the trestle boards that had been used to lengthen it had been taken away. Many of the chairs now lined the other walls, and several couches and stools had been brought from other parts of the house to accommodate those who were not dancing. Most remarkable of all given the short time for preparation, a small stage platform had been erected in the corner by the service doors, and upon it the musicians were making ready to play. Boyd stopped short of this platform, and turned to survey his assembled guests with a welcoming smile. Then he nodded to the fiddler, who launched into a cheerful tune that lacked the tempo of any popular dance. It was the cue for the guests to mill about and make arrangements for the first few engagements of the evening.

"If it wasn't my anniversary you and me could lead the first dance together," Boyd said conspiratorially. "As it is I best wait for Verbena."

"Yes, I think that's best," said Mary. She noticed with relief that their mismatched partnership had attracted less lasting scrutiny than it might otherwise have done. Everyone knew that Verbena had a small baby to care for, and there were some comforts an aging Negro mammy could not provide. The natural assumption was that Boyd's spouse was the source of the delay, and that Mary's was gallantly waiting to see her in.

Boyd led her to a chair in the shelter of the rubber plant brought in from the back parlor, and almost at once the young lawyer from the next county appeared at her side. "May I fetch you some punch, Mrs. Bohannon?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," said Mary. This at least was an invitation a lady might courteously refuse. "I have only just finished my tea, and I hope to be dancing quite soon."

"You must save a dance for me," said Mr. Secrest. "If you have not promised them all by now."

"You are the first gentleman to do me the honor of asking, Mr. Secrest," said Mary. "I should be delighted. The second reel, perhaps? I have pledged the first one to my husband." She had not, but she had no intention of giving that most popular dance to anyone but Cullen.

"The second reel it is," said the young man with a bow. "But you must allow me the pleasure of your comp'ny before the festivities commence."

This was only a courtesy, but it was a kind one, for it allowed Boyd to see to his other guests without abandoning her. Mary inclined her head and Mr. Secrest stepped a little nearer to her chair, standing half-turned towards her but still open to the rest of the room.

"I did so enjoy our conversation at dinner, ma'am," he said. "Your husband is a gentleman of fine taste."

"Why, thank you," said Mary. "Certainly I have always thought so. I hope…"

A lull in the conversation drew her head towards the door, where Cullen had just entered with Verbena on his arm. He led her over to Boyd, and handed her off with a bow. Then he searched the crowd and found Mary, striding up to her as the crowd cleared the floor. Matthew stepped up onto a corner of the stage and signaled to the musicians to halt. Then in a strong, deep voice that rang off the two brightly-lit chandeliers he instructed the dancers to take their places.

"May I have the honor of your hand in this dance, Mrs. Bohannon?" Cullen said, bowing gallantly. "Unless you've promised it to this fine fellow?"

"I've made arrangements for the next one," said Mr. Secrest. "If you'll excuse me, ma'am: I'll be back when it's time to collect it."

Mary nodded and smiled as he departed, then too Cullen's hand and rose. Boyd and Verbena were already in place at the head of the room, twin lines forming below them. Cullen led Mary onto the dance floor, murmuring as he went; "I'm sorry I was late in coming out."

"It's quite all right; Boyd took care of me," said Mary. She frowned faintly as she placed her free hand over his. "You're shaking." And he was: quaking deep into the bone.

"Just excited, I guess," he said as he released her at her place in the line and stepped in across from her. "Ain't every day I get to dance with the most beautiful lady in Meridian."

There was a last rush of couples taking their places, and Matthew motioned to the musicians. The opening bars began and the gentlemen bowed as the ladies curtsied. Then all at once they were in motion: forty hoopskirts swinging and forty pairs of neatly trousered legs marching. Mary raised her right hand to step palm-to-palm with Cullen as they swung around one another, and then turned to move in the other direction, left hands together. His feet were swift and sure; his motions perfectly timed to those of the other men. For her part she moved every bit as smoothly and gracefully as the Southern ladies, her heart pounding and her slippers flying. She stepped back as the couples formed their lines again, and then reached out with both hands for her husband. Kid gloves closed on silk and they spun again, leaning against one another's pull as only dancers who trusted one another implicitly could. Mary could feel the delicious inertia of her hoop as it swung with her hips, and she knew she was smiling radiantly. There was still a tremor in Cullen's hands, and his eyes were almost ferociously bright, but he was grinning as he spun her.

Brilliantly colored skirts buffeted one another as the ladies stepped back again, and then brushed the legs of the gentlemen as the dancers sprang into the _dos-á-dos_. Mary felt the front of her skirts sway forward when they were at the nadir of the movement: Cullen had given a little playful kick to the back of her lowest hoop. It was a game they had played during their courtship in New York, and her spirits soared to realize he had remembered it. In the middle of the line it was almost impossible to notice, but it grew dangerous the closer they got to the lead couple. Such antics were not encouraged.

Boyd and Verbena were galoping down the corridor between the two lines now, while the other dancers clapped, the ladies letting their hoops rock while the men stamped one heel in time to the music. Verbena's hair jounced merrily and there was a high flush on Boyd's pale cheeks that made him look almost handsome. Mary smiled for him as he passed her, and on the return he gave her a tiny but exceedingly daring little wink. Then they began to work their way down the line, twirling with each successive couple as the others clapped or readied for their turn. It was hard work for the lead couple with such a long line: the later reels of the evening would be split into two. But there was an undeniable splendor to the long sashays and a special delight to the promenade beneath the bridge of the head couple's hands when eighty people were dancing. There was hardly a body left among the chairs: young and old, everyone wanted to partake of the heady delight of the first reel.

The lady to Mary's left was in the center now, and she stopped her clapping to stand ready. Boyd's palm met hers and they spun, while beside them Cullen and Verbena did the same. The Bohannons stepped back into their lines and the Ainsleys went on. They reached the end at last and swung back up the aisle of bodies. Then it was time to follow in the broad sweep that led them under the trellis of upraised arms: Boyd's in dark grey sleeves and Verbena's draped with fine cream-colored silk. Cullen's hand closed on Mary's, intimate despite the buffer of their gloves, and they passed between their host and hostess. The lines spread, and the second couple was now first, and the steps began anew.

There were so many couples that Mary wondered whether she and Cullen might have their chance to lead at all, but it came at last and before she was too breathless. Both hands clasped, his left hand leading, they bounded down the long corridor. Had Mary looked she would have seen only a blur of men's faces, but she was watching Cullen. The eerie intensity that had been in his eyes was replaced with glittering quicksilver abandon, and his smile satisfied the last wish of her heart. It was almost painful to tear away from him to turn with another man, but she swung back to him between each one, and always he was smiling just for her. Matthew was calling out the movements of the dance, but no one could hear them over the thunder of clapping hands and the singing of the instruments. No one needed them anyhow. It was the nation's most popular dance, North and South, and everyone present could walk it in their sleep.

The rush of passing bodies tugged at Mary's hoop, and she was glad she had worn her best petticoat, for surely its lace could be seen. Then the last couple was through their upraised arms and they took their new place at the end of the line. And on they danced: merry and light-footed and increasingly short-winded.

When at last the final measures played and the dancers made their bows and curtseys, Mary could feel her pulse beating a staccato in her temples, and she knew her color was high. She let Cullen lead her without watching where, and she opened her sandalwood fan to send a flurry of fragrant air over her face and bosom.

"You seemed to enjoy that, ma'am," Cullen chuckled softly.

"Oh, yes!" gasped Mary, unable to say anything more. Her stays heaved with her breathing and she felt more alive than she had at any time since her illness. "It's a shame I promised the next one."

He raised her hand and kissed the back of her glove. "You can't dance with your husband all evening," he reminded her. "Makes the other men jealous."

The next dance was a waltz, to ease everyone's breathing and offer a rest before the next spirited dance. As she had promised the second reel, and not the second dance, Mary was able to step out onto the floor with Cullen again. Boyd and Verbena were also together: in most instances a breach of etiquette, but eminently appropriate at their anniversary party. Mary rested her hand on Cullen's upper arm and felt his settle on the small of her back. The first few measures they danced in silence, each still recovering from the vigorous reel.

"You know it was my mama and pappy helped get this county used to waltzes?" Cullen said presently, guiding her smoothly through the circling couples so that her skirts scarcely brushed those of the other ladies. "Mama came from Charleston, where it was just starting to be popular. Even out there it was looked on as something scandalous; out here they thought it was pretty near indecent."

"In some places people still do," said Mary.

"And this'd quite likely be one of 'em," said Cullen; "but Mama loved waltzing an' Pappy loved Mama. Every ball they went to he'd pay off the musicians and they'd dance it, hang the scandal. After a few parties folks sort of got accustomed to it. They didn't have much more than four years together, but they did accomplish that."

"That's not all they accomplished," Mary said softly. She wished she could put her head down upon her husband's breast, but that certainly _would _be a scandal. She kept her back straight and maintained the respectable distance required to keep her hoop from being mashed between them. "There's you."

He laughed softly. "There's folks 'round here might take exception to your idea of an accomplishment," he said. "Seems I'm nothing but a scandal."

"Hang the scandal," said Mary. "Just like your mama and pappy."

The next dance was a stately cotillion, and Mary was asked to take it with Doctor Whitehead. Cullen had managed to arrange to dance it with Verbena, thus discharging his obligation to accompany his hostess early in the evening, and they were only two couples away from one another. Then came the next reel, and Mr. Secrest came to claim his due. He was an able partner, but he could not match Cullen in flair or grace. Mary tried to be attentive to the young attorney, but her eyes keep travelling up the line to where Cullen was dancing with Sarah White. The reel was shorter and less vigorous with two lead couples and fewer pairs on the floor, and it was followed by a brief interlude. There was a great scrambling among the younger men to procure punch or lemonade for their ladies, and Mary allowed herself to be led to a chair. She was quickly attended by one of the Ives brothers – she could never keep them straight – and pledged the next dance.

So the evening went on. At such a party the gentlemen were honor-bound to see that no lady – not even a Yankee lady whose husband worked his own tobacco – went without an invitation to dance. Nor could any lady refuse a gentleman for any reason but a previous pledge, or to sit out a dance to refresh herself. To do so would have been to imply that the gentleman in question was somehow undesirable, and that the host ought not to have received him. So both Mary and Cullen had a variety of partners, though he made sure to come back to her every few dances. They had another waltz together, and a quadrille. In the next quadrille they had different partners, but managed to place themselves across from one another in the same square. And Cullen defied convention by claiming her for the final reel of the first set of the evening.

While the musicians rested their instruments and refreshed themselves in the corridor that led to the kitchens, the dancers were served with dainty cut-glass dishes of orange ice. It was just about the costliest treat that Mary could imagine in the first week of August, when oranges had to be brought from Argentina and the ice shipped from New England in the winter was surely running low. She savored it, taking only the tiniest of spoonfuls and letting the taste fill her palate and rise up into her sinuses between each one. But Cullen just stared at the bowl in his hand, a brooding distaste in his eyes. Then, with a sudden spastic motion of his arm, he thrust it back at the slender black maid who carried the tray.

"I don't want it," he said, almost viciously. "Take it away."

Mary did not quite frown, but the corners of her lips twitched downward. "Why don't you want it?" she asked. "It's heavenly."

"You can have mine," he snapped, snatching it back from the girl and handing it to his wife. "Enjoy it. You deserve it."

Mary looked down at the delicacy, now melting into a pale puddle in the bottom of the bowl, and then raised her head with a question on her lips. But Cullen had stepped away from her and was pouring himself a punch-glass full of brandy from the decanter provided for the gentleman.

"Let me take that empty dish, Miss Mary," a kindly voice said, relieving her of her own bowl. It was Doctor Whitehead, hair neatly oiled and hands covered in dove grey gloves but eyes just as gentle as they had been on the day he had attended her as she bled in her bed. "Are you having a pleasant evening?"

"So very pleasant," she said, still looking bewilderedly after her husband.

"Don't mind him; he just needs to catch a fresh wind," the doctor said reassuringly. "It's a long day for him: he must be getting tired."

This was true enough. It was now nearly ten o'clock: by this time in the normal way of things Cullen would be fast asleep, or at the very least Bethel would be downstairs dragging him away from his endless anxious figuring to chase him bedward. He had not had quite his usual pre-dawn start this morning, but he had put in a full day of work yesterday and would drive himself to do the same tomorrow. She watched as he knocked back half the contents of the glass in a single draught, setting his teeth against the burn of the alcohol. The gesture had likely passed unnoticed amid the crowd of revelers; young men fetching refreshments for their favored belles; older gentlemen gathering in groups to talk; girls comparing dance cards. Mary hoped that it had. There was such fierce desperation in that hard jerk of his head and the tilting of the cup.

"I'll go and suggest we take our leave," she said softly, not quite aware she had spoken aloud.

"I wouldn't do that," said Doctor Whitehead. "It'll only put him in a foul temper. He'll know you ain't ready to go. Anybody can see you ain't ready to go."

"Oh, dear." Mary flushed. There were few things as embarrassing at a party like this as having others suspect you did not often have the benefit of such amusements. In New York, at least, a girl made every effort to make a ball seem commonplace, and even a little dull.

"Don't worry: it's no bad thing," the doctor soothed. "It's a compliment to Miss Verbena if you're enjoying yourself. Stay on. When Cullen's ready to go he'll ask if you're wore out. Then you can tell him yes and get him home. But before that happens maybe you could find a little waltz for me?"

"Of course I can," Mary said, a fond smile spreading across her face. Her concern was ridiculous, she realized. In New York there were dozens of parties thrown at dozens of houses every month, and one might go for weeks without meeting the same acquaintance twice. Here, everyone already knew that the Bohannons had not been to a party since the White wedding. "I think Cullen and I are very fortunate in our friends, Doctor Whitehead."

"Well, now, so am I," he said. He patted the back of her hand. "Go on and finish up that ice: they'll be starting up again soon."

Mary did as she was told and hurriedly handed off the little bowl to a servant as Cullen returned to her side. The scent of brandy was thick upon his breath and his eyes seemed clouded.

"What'd Doc want?" he asked huskily.

"A waltz," Mary said, glad of the convenient half-truth. She reached to straighten Cullen's cravat. As she did she noticed a small golden stain on her glove where the orange ice must have splashed when he had thrust it at her. Her first instinct was to find an opportunity to retreat so that she might change her glove for her spare, but then she remembered that she was not carrying an extra pair. She only had the one nice pair of white gloves now. Thankfully the mark was pale and not large enough to be especially noticeable. Still, she lowered her hands quickly and folded her fingers over the discolored spot.

Garland Wheeler came up, gallantly asking for the opening reel. Mary accepted and took his arm while Cullen went to find another partner. As he moved off she wished that propriety did not prevent them from having every single dance together. She could have happily flown about in his arms all night, and she did not like to see him walking away from her with that strange fog in his eyes.

It took four more dances after that reel for Cullen to find the opportunity to lead her out again. Together they danced the Gay Gordons, a dance that Mary had never had occasion to learn before coming to Lauderdale County. Cullen had teased her as he had taught it to her in their parlor, saying that was what came of knowing too few Scotsmen. His eyes were laughing again as he danced it with her now, and Mary wondered if he was reliving the same memory.

They were just stepping off the dance floor when Cullen suddenly balked like a startled mule. Mary was jerked back out of her step by his arm about her waist, and her startled effort to smile at the gentleman who had just stepped into their path faltered a little when she recognized Mr. Sutcliffe.

"You are an accomplished dancer, Mrs. Bohannon," he said politely, his drawling voice strange to ears grown accustomed to the more clipped accents of Mississippi. He sounded almost Georgian, she thought. Or maybe Virginian.

"Thank you, Mr. Sutcliffe," she said. "I regret I have been too much occupied to take note of your grace on the floor."

It was a suitably polite and truthful reply, but Cullen made a soft snorting sound deep in his throat and his grip on her bodice eased a little.

"I shall have to rectify that," he said. "Might I have the honor of the next dance?"

Cullen stiffened afresh, and Mary forced a smile. "I believe it is to be a waltz, is it not?" she asked. "If that is so, I have promised it to Doctor Whitehead."

"Ah," said Mr. Sutcliffe, nodding. It was the only acceptable excuse. "The next waltz, then. Unless you are engaged for that one also?"

She was not, and she could scarcely claim fatigue for any dance but the immediately impending one. "The next waltz, Mr. Sutcliffe," she assented. "It will be my pleasure."

"And mine," he said, and moved off.

"I wish you'd told him no," Cullen hissed, almost too soon.

"How could I possibly?" whispered Mary.

"Dammit, I don't know!" Cullen shook his head. "He only wants to—"

"To make you angry," Mary said, her lips scarcely moving. "You mustn't let him do it. I'll be quite all right. I'm used to dancing with unpleasant older gentlemen."

"You are?" Cullen asked, surprised out of his judiciously hushed voice.

There was no need for her to lower her own voice anymore, either. "Yes, indeed," she said. "I've danced with every one of my father's business associates, and New York railroad men can be exceedingly unpleasant."

Paulina Trussell and her intended were standing near enough to hear and they both laughed, earnestly amused instead of scornful. Mary smiled at them and then looked back at Cullen. "You'd best go and find a partner," she said. "Perhaps you ought to ask Felicity Ives. I think she might enjoy a turn about the floor: she seemed quite taken with you at supper."

Cullen chuckled and the furrows of frustration faded a little from his face. "A girl like Felicity would've filled her dance card last week," he said. "I'll go ask Greta. She sat out the last few: hopefully she's feeling energetic enough after her rest."

He was sweet to say it that way, with her sister so near. The truth was that Greta was not a very popular partner and despite the fact that good manners demanded the gentlemen give each lady ample opportunity to dance she was something of a wallflower. Mary nodded him off and then turned to look for Doctor Whitehead.

The doctor would have been an excellent dancer, but for the fact that he was so very careful. It kept his movements from having the languorous fluidity that a waltz required. Still Mary enjoyed that dance more than she had enjoyed any other she had had with a partner other than Cullen. Waltzes were made for talking, and Doctor Whitehead always turned the conversation to matters dear to Mary's heart. They spent most of the dance talking about Gabe, and the dear man seemed to care genuinely about every small motherly pride or worry. He _did_ care, she thought. He must. He had brought Gabe into this world, after all, and his father before him, and she knew that in his quiet way Doctor Whitehead loved her husband. That love, it seemed, extended to her as well, and it was very comforting.

The dance ended far too soon, and it was time for another reel. Anxious about the waltz she had promised to Mr. Sutcliffe, Mary had intended to sit this one out, but Boyd came up to her.

"Do please tell me I might have your hand in this dance, Miss Mary," he said, oddly shy. "I've been trying all evening to get near you, but I do need to dance with everyone."

"Very well, and thank you," said Mary graciously. As she stepped onto the floor she saw Cullen hurriedly cast about for a partner so that he could join in the dance before the break between sections. He managed it, but only just, dragging a laughing Felicity Ives – free after all, so it seemed – to the very end of the line. Though she enjoyed the speed and the challenge of dancing with long-limbed Boyd, Mary spent the entire reel waiting for the moment when she was in the head couple and could whirl from arm to arm until she reached her husband. He laughed as he pranced with her, and once again she felt as young and foolish as a debutante.

But then the reel ended and the next waltz was announced. Cullen fell back against the wall, stalwartly ignoring his obligation either to dance or to attend upon a seated lady. And Mary smoothed her gloves and settled her composure as Mr. Sutcliffe approached her.

He took her arm and led her out, and they saluted one another: he with a crisp bow and she with a delicate, fluttering curtsey. Then he took her right hand in his left. Their gloves, both silk, slipped against one another and he tightened his hold ever so slightly. Mary lifted her left hand towards his shoulder, turning the palm carefully out so that only her index finger was in contact with his arm as was appropriate when waltzing with a man one scarcely knew. Then his right snaked about her waist and they were off.

"I understand you were brought up in some luxury in New York," he said smoothly. "Your father is a wealthy industrialist?"

"A railroad man," Mary said. "Not precisely wealthy, but comfortable."

"Ah." Mr. Sutcliffe nodded sagely. "It must be quite a change for you, then. Living down here."

"I am sure I don't know what you mean, Mr. Sutcliffe," said Mary.

"Mississippi, of course," he said, a silky note to his voice. "So very different from New York."

"Certainly," Mary agreed. "Particularly with respect to weather. I could scarcely believe it when I celebrated my first Christmas here without even a flake of snow."

"I suppose this Christmas will not be a very cheerful one for you," said Sutcliffe sadly. He let this hang in the air for a moment before adding in a deliverately disjointed fashion; "Unless the results of the election are favorable."

"I'm afraid I have little interest in politics," said Mary. She searched her mind swiftly for the turn of phrase that Southern girls seemed to employ whenever men raised that subject. It was difficult to think, because they had taken a turn on the floor and now she could see her husband over her partner's shoulder. Cullen was glaring at the back of Sutcliffe's head as if he could will it to burst into flames. Mary gave him her most encouraging smile as the words came back to her. "Gentlemen are just ever so much cleverer about those things than ladies are."

He clicked his tongue. "Now, now, Mrs. Bohannon," he said. "May I call you Miss Mary? Miss Mary, I expected better of you. These silly ornamental girls might believe such things, but you're a different breed entirely."

"I think you'll find that Yankees can be every bit as ornamental as Southern girls," Mary said. She was beginning to grow uneasy. He was dancing rather too close and his hold on her back seemed almost possessive. His eyes too, she noticed, only seemed to spend a few moments at a time upon her face: they kept travelling downward instead. Every time she had touched Cullen that evening she had regretted the gloves on her hands. Now she was very glad of them.

"Some Yankees, maybe," cooed Sutcliffe. "But surely not you. Anyone who could make do as you have can be neither silly nor purely ornamental."

"Isn't the music lovely?" Mary said, leaping to a non-sequitur in an attempt to deflect the conversation from whatever it was he wanted to say that infused his words with such saccharine malice.

"Tell me, my dear, just what _do _you do all day when that brutish husband of yours is out grubbing like a nigger?" he whispered, leaning in now almost farther than propriety allowed. Almost, but not quite. He was still completely aware of their surroundings, like a panther moving slowly in for the kill in hostile territory. "Do you make the beds and scrub the floors? Or do you sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam?"

Mary tried again to take a step away from him, but he only moved in again. She could do nothing else without disrupting the dance, and that was one thing she dared not do. It was not because of the attention they had drawn when they stepped out: Mrs. Bohannon and the man who had been disparaging her husband for weeks throughout the county. She could have endured the embarrassment of breaking away from him, if it would get his hand off her back and his hateful words out of her ear. But if she did that then Cullen would know that Sutcliffe had said something untoward, and he would be livid with rage. He would have hard and angry words for the man – deserved, no doubt, but far more damaging to Cullen's image than to that of the wealthy planter. The way he was looking at them now, he might even be furious enough to do something more than shout. In her four years in Mississippi, Mary had never heard of anyone she knew actually trying to settle a matter of honor with dueling pistols, but she knew such things were still done on occasion. It was improbable, perhaps, but not impossible.

"I believe it's French," she said as if she had not heard him. "The music. Perhaps Mrs. Sutcliffe would know? Is she musically inclined?"

"He really ought to do better for you," said Sutcliffe. "For you and your dear little boy. What kind of a man is he, to let that _dear_ little boy grow up like a field hand?"

Mary found her own angry words rising. "Mr. Sutcliffe, you must not say such things about my husband," she said, forcing calm rebuke over righteous indignation. "Mr. Bohannon is a fine—"

But she was spared. The little orchestra crescendoed and struck the final notes. Sutcliffe had to release her so that they might salute one another, and she was free. "Thank you for the dance, Mrs. Bohannon," he said coolly, leading her towards the edge of the floor.

He did not get far, for Cullen came swooping in to take her arm. Without a word to his disdained neighbor he led Mary back to the discrete corner by the rubber plant where she had started the evening.

"What did he say to you? What did you talk about?" he asked in a hoarse undertone. His eyes were flashing and Mary noticed how the fingers of his right hand flexed as if of their own accord.

"The music," she said as serenely as she could. "The weather in Mississippi as it differs from New York. A Christmas without snow. My father's line of business."

He stared at her for a moment, thinking it through. It sounded like conversation enough to fill an entire dance without anything else. He relaxed a little, but only a little. "He didn't say anything he didn't ought to have said?"

"Well, he did start trying to talk about the election," Mary equivocated; "which is generally considered in bad taste when dancing…" She pursed her lips so primly that Cullen was startled into a laugh. She smiled for him. "He was only trying to make your blood boil," she said. "You mustn't let him spoil your evening."

"Only one thing can salvage this evening," Cullen said, but there was a playful note to the words.

"What's that?" asked Mary coyly, knowing the answer. The musicians were starting up a lively polka tune.

Cullen held out his hand and grinned, eyes snapping with sudden delight. "Dance with me," he said.


	20. Aftermath

_Note: In the immortal words of my baby brother: "Drunk Bohannon is Fun Bohannon". Which I really want embroidered on a t-shirt._

**Chapter Twenty: Aftermath**

The rattle of the buggy wheels woke Bethel from her shallow slumber. She raised her head up off the back of her chair, feeling the sinews of her neck shift and crackle in protest. She had not intended to fall asleep, but she supposed she should have expected to do so. It was long past the time at which she was ordinarily abed, and the day started so early in summertime. Hurriedly but stiffly she got to her feet. She had brought her chair from the kitchen into the dining room, just behind the door to the front entryway, so that she might hear when Mister Cullen and Missus Mary came home. The mistress had said she need not wait up for them, but that was absurd. Bethel couldn't very well rest soundly in her bed knowing that Mister Cullen was abroad at night.

The front doors were open, to catch the night air and to let the sound from the drive carry into the house, and Bethel quickly lit one of the lamps affixed to the wall. She touched the match to the wick of one of the table lamps, too – the one with the tall base that could be held almost like a torch. This she picked up as she went out onto the veranda to greet the returning revelers.

"Woah, Bonnie! Woah, Pike!" The buggy rolled to a stop before the house, its glossy body shining a little in the light of the moon, which was only one night past full. Bethel could see Mister Cullen's silhouette upon the driver's board, but the voice that had called to the horses was Missus Mary's. Frowning, Bethel came down the steps and approached the little carriage.

As her light approached Mister Cullen blinked stupidly at it, squinting against the glow of the kerosene flame. He had the lines in his hands, but they were slack. From the shadow of the buggy cover Missus Mary leaned out, gathering up the lead edge of the lap robe.

"You let me do that, Missus," Bethel said, setting the lamp down on the driver's seat beside Mister Cullen and unlatching the buggy door. "You goin' muss up that pretty dress with dust."

"Thank you, Bethel," the lady said sweetly. "You really didn't need to wait for us."

"I 'sepcts I didn'," said Bethel. "But it only right. You have a nice time at that party, honey?"

The broad, beautiful skirts were free of their coverings now, and Missus Mary gathered them in to make ready to stand. "Oh, yes!" she sighed, looking suddenly like a very young girl. "It was wonderful. Cullen? Wasn't it wonderful?"

"Wonderful," he said thickly. His eyes had adjusted to the lamplight, and he was now looping off the reins with exaggerated slowness. Bethel kept her expression carefully smooth, not wanting to lapse unwittingly into an indulgent smile. Mister Cullen was well in his cups.

On principle Bethel thoroughly disapproved of drunkenness. The elder Mr. Bohannon had been exceedingly fond of spirits, and had often become belligerent when he drank. She had tried in vain to curb the habit in Mister Cullen as a boy, but he had acquired an early taste for liquor and the other wealthy planters' sons with whom he had ridden in those days had all indulged. She privately suspected that he had perfected his head for alcohol during the years when he was out from under her sphere of influence and well away from her watchful and disapproving eye at university. Certainly by the time he had come back there had been no use in even attempting to dissuade him from drinking to excess. But all that was in the past, now, and he could no longer afford even to put wine on the supper table or to enjoy a pleasant (and socially permissible) taste of brandy before bed each evening. If it gave him pleasure to drink heavily one night after months of near-abstinence and ceaseless toil, Bethel was not going to begrudge him that little luxury.

He had finished with the reins and was now in the process of trying to climb down from the buggy. He moved with great care, his head bowed low so that he was peering out from under his eyebrows. He gripped the bar with his right hand and the edge of the board with his left, and shifted his hips, watching the cast-iron step bolted to the buggy box as if it might suddenly vanish.

"Here, min' that lamp," Bethel said, catching it up again before his coattail could drag it off the seat. Mister Cullen stood, swaying a little, and then very slowly and carefully climbed down off of the buggy. He paused as he rounded her, his bare head stretching backward, and he smiled.

"Evening, Bethel," he said. "Everything as it should be?"

"Yassir, Mist' Cullen," she said soothingly. "Ev'ything jus' fine here. You enjoy youself at Mist' Ainsley's?"

"It was about equal parts pleasure an' humiliation," he said solemnly, nodding like a scholar making some grave scientific observation. He shuffled around Bethel and held up his hand to his wife. "Mrs. Bohannon? May I have the honor of escortin' you up to your bed?"

Missus Mary flushed a little at this, but she smiled and placed her gloved palm upon his. "I'll go ahead and wait for you," she said. Her voice had the same gentle, patient lilt that she sometimes used when Mister Gabe was tired out beyond the capacity for reason or good behaviour. "You need to get Pike and Bonnie unhitched."

"Right," said Mister Cullen ponderously. "Tha's right." He looked at Bethel. "She's right."

Bethel shook her head. "You ain't in no fit state," she said. "I goin' get you upstairs, an' then I go wake Nate to see to them horses."

"Don' do that," Mister Cullen said mournfully, swinging his head like a pendulum. Missus Mary alighted from the buggy, keeping her hand lightly upon his, but using her other hand upon the buggy box for the leverage she needed. She gathered her skirts hurriedly after her and smoothed them after her somewhat inelegant descent. Her husband scarcely seemed to notice that she was now on the ground beside him, he was looking at Bethel.

"Don' do that," he repeated. His voice was blurred about the edges, and he blinked very slowly. "He got work in the mornin'."

"So does we all," said Bethel; "an' I 'spects you goin' have a mis'able time getting up for it. But you's like to get down the stable an' clear forget 'bout them horses, or leave the barn door open so they runs off."

He stared at her, clearly affronted. "I wouldn' do that," he protested. "Mary, would I do that?"

"I don't think so, dear, but you might so easily spoil your best suit," she said. "Bethel and I took such care in brushing it. If you do intend to see to the horses you had best get changed first."

Mister Cullen looked down at himself, running his palm along the front of his silk waistcoat. His thumb snagged on the chain of his watch and dragged it clear out of the little pocket. It swung drowsily between his hips until Missus Mary reached and carefully put it back. "Go on upstairs and change your clothes," she said. "Bethel can tie off the horses to wait for you."

He reached for his throat and pulled loose the knot of his cravat. "I think tha's best," he mumbled. "I think tha's best, don' you, Bethel?"

"Yassir, I think that bes'," she agreed stoutly. "You get out them nice clothes, an' don' you jus' leave 'em in a heap on the floor, neither. Put them over the chair."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, bobbing his head obediently. "Yes, ma'am: tha's just what I'll do."

He looked around as though he did not know quite where he was, much less where he was meant to be going. But Missus Mary took hold of his shoulders and turned him towards the veranda steps, then gave him the gentlest of pushes between the shoulder blades. He started off like a clockwork toy, moving in half-stumbling jerks until he reached the first stair. Then he watched his hand as it closed on the bannister, and pulled himself carefully up onto the porch. He got as far as the door and stopped, slouching against the post to look back at the women.

"Ain't you comin', pretty lady?" he asked.

"I'll be along presently," said Mary. "I just need a quick word with Bethel."

"Ah." He nodded as though he should have foreseen this, and then launched himself over the threshold and managed to catch hold of the newel-post before he fell to his knees on the second carpeted tread of the staircase. He began his slow progress towards the upper floor, his dark suit fading into the shadows beyond the reach of the wall-lamp.

When he was gone from their sight, Bethel sighed. "He goin' trip, or fall 'gainst the wall, an' wake Mist' Gabe," she said.

"Better Gabe than Nate," said Mary. "Gabe can have a good long nap tomorrow." She looked at the buggy. "Bethel, you don't suppose that you and I could manage to get them into their stalls? They don't need brushing after such a short ride, and the carriage boy at West Willows said he fed them at sundown, but…"

"You didn' ought to be in no stables in that dress, Missus, an' that the truth," Bethel said firmly. "I go wake Nate: he ought to be expectin' it. He lucky he ain't had to spen' the whole night with them horses on Mist' Ainsley's lawn."

"We could tuck it up," said Missus Mary. "I'd run and change, but if I do then Cullen will know what I'm about, and he really _isn't_ in any state to be looking after the horses. I never should have suggested it."

"Look like he have a mite too much to drink," Bethel agreed quietly.

"I believe he did," she said with a tiny smile. She looked down at her spreading skirts. "Suppose we did tuck it up, and maybe I got out of the hoop?"

Bethel shook her head. "Le's go into the parlor," she said. "We get you out of that dress an' them fine petticoats, an' you can cover up with one of my frocks. It ain't fitting, an' it ain't goin' fit you so well, neither, but there ain't nobody else to see."

Missus Mary's lips tightened a little as she considered this. It was an improper suggestion, of course, but over the last year propriety had bent again and again to necessity. Bethel respected the young woman's determination to do what needed to be done, and to do it herself with as little fuss as possible. Bethel was of the opinion that Nate could just roust himself out of bed and do his duty by his master, but she knew that he would not see it that way. He would be resentful and perhaps belligerent. Lately Nate had been increasingly restive, and Elijah said that when it was just the two of them he almost never stopped complaining. He hadn't been brave enough to bring his grievances to Bethel yet, doubtless knowing just what she would say. Still, she did not really want to have that confrontation in the middle of the night when the horses were waiting to go to their rest.

Finally the mistress nodded. "That's just what we'll do, Bethel, thank you," she said. "You have an answer to every problem, don't you?"

She moved to reach for the reins, but Bethel brushed her hand away. "You let me do that," she said. "An' you go in an' take off them jewels."

While Missus Mary retreated into the house, Bethel took the lines in her free hand. She harbored a secret fear of the spirited northern horses, particularly when they were harnessed together, but she did not intend to let them realize it. She brought the reins over Pike's head and tugged stoutly at them. "Budge on up here," she said, and to her enormous relief they stepped obediently forward, following her towards the fence so that she could tie them off on the rail. "Halt up! Woah!" she said, and Pike stopped at once. Bonnie tossed her head and pawed the ground impatiently, but she did not defy her partner. Bethel hurriedly wrapped the reins as best she could one-handed.

"You wait there," she said sternly, holding the lamp close to her face so that they could see her glare. Then she hastened up the steps.

Missus Mary was standing by the table that held the lamps and candlesticks, taking out her earbobs and setting them in the shallow glass dish meant, but seldom used, for visiting cards. She had already removed her bangles and Miss Charlotte's emerald necklace, and she carefully unpinned her garnet brooch. Then, with Bethel lighting the way, she retreated into the parlor.

The elaborate dancing costume that had taken them three-quarters of an hour to don was doffed in less than ten minutes: the gown draped across the back of the sofa and the petticoats piled on Mister Cullen's chair. Bethel hurried into the little room off the parlor. It had been intended as an office when the house had first been built, but for thirty years it had served as Bethel's bedroom. Lit only by the faint glow of the lamp left behind for her mistress, Bethel went to the battered old clothes press and brought out her Sunday dress. It was clean: freshly laundered yesterday afternoon and just down from the clothesline this morning. And although it was black and unadorned as befitted Bethel's age and position, it was made of good, smooth cotton and was not so very different in appearance from Missus Mary's work dresses. It would do.

She returned to the parlor to find Missus Mary stepping out of her hoop. There was a thump from above, and both women looked up at the ceiling, wondering what Mister Cullen had done to make such a noise. Then Bethel offered the dress and Missus Mary took it and lifted it hurriedly over her head. It was too broad in the shoulders and too short in the body and skirt, and the waist hung loose though it was too snug across the breasts, but they managed to button it up over the underpetticoat and the lacy corset-cover. Bethel took off her own apron and offered it to the mistress, who tied it on as they went out to the front yard again.

The horses were waiting patiently, and Missus Mary took their reins. This time Bethel allowed it, for she was glad not to be the one leading the big rattling buggy and the energetic team, and the mistress was no longer hampered by silk and hoops. Bethel went ahead with the lamp, but neither Missus Mary nor the horses really needed it: the path to the barn was level and well-known. At the threshold the younger lady dropped the reins to help Bethel haul open the heavy doors, and then led the team right in so that their noses almost touched the back door.

Bethel set the lantern on the driver's seat again, and the two women set to work unbuckling the traces and loosening the bridles. Missus Mary, bless her, took Bonnie and left the more docile Pike for Bethel. Missus Mary liked horses a great deal, and Bethel didn't think she was afraid of them at all – though at Mister Cullen's insistence she rarely rode Bonnie. She seemed to know just what she was doing as she worked, too, and Bethel found herself copying the younger woman's movements.

"How you learn to do that?" she asked curiously as her mistress picked the bit out of Bonnie's mouth and lifted the bridle carefully.

"I never really did," Missus Mary admitted with a small shy smile. "I used to sit in our carriage while the coachman did it, though, and I've certainly watched Cullen enough times. Still I'm sure I'll unfasten something that doesn't need loosening and he'll have to do a little extra reassembly next time. As it is we've got the buggy the wrong way 'round."

"That all right," said Bethel, mirroring the younger woman and bending to reach for Pike's belly girth. He sucked in his breath knowingly so that the strap hung a little looser and was easier to unfasten. "Still better 'n Mist' Cullen tryin' to do it hisself, drunk like he be."

She realized too late that this was not precisely the sort of thing a slave ought to say about her master, and clamped her lips together apologetically. Where Mister Cullen was concerned she was often less than formal, but to acknowledge so frankly that he was actually intoxicated, as opposed to the more delicate euphemism of "had too much to drink", was disrespectful. But Missus Bohannon only laughed a little, very quietly, and lifted the heavy harness off of Bonnie's back.

"You didn't ought to lift that…" Bethel protested faintly.

"Nonsense," said the lady. "I'm quite recovered. I was dancing all night, and I'm not a bit sore."

"You might be tomorrow," Bethel warned. "Thing like that tend to sneak up on a woman. Leastways you' feet goin' hurt."

"Yes, but it's worth it." The mistress had the lead halter over Bonnie's head now, and looked at the narrow space between the horse and the door. "Oh, dear," she said. "I think we'll have to take them outside to turn around."

"That easy enough," said Bethel, reaching for Pike's lead. He bowed his head obligingly so that she could put it on, and she dared to stroke his neck. "That a good horse," she said. "You know this ol' nigger don' know what she doin', don' you?"

"I think they knew that Cullen was… ah, a trifle intoxicated as well," said Missus Mary. "They kept to a slow trot even when he let the lines go loose, and they took the home turn without even needing the command. It was only at the house that I even needed to speak out. They wanted to go right on to the barn, and Cullen seemed to forget that he needed to stop them."

"It ain't right, a gentleman havin' to drive hisself home from a party," said Bethel. Together they dragged on the door that led to the paddock. One of the mules, awakened by the groaning of the wood, hawed loudly. The others stirred in their stalls, and Bonnie gave a disdainful snort. "What if them horses didn' behave, an' tried to run 'way with the buggy? It might of flipped right over an' crushed you both!"

"Pike and Bonnie are too clever for that," said Mary. "I tell you, they knew they were driving themselves home." She led Bonnie out into the moonlight and turned her around, then brought her back into the shelter of the barn and around into her deeply shadowed stall. Bethel tried to work up the courage to do the same, but even before she had a firm hold on the line Pike was walking, turning a patient loop and following his partner. Bethel had to hurry to keep step: he was leading her.

"There, pretty girl," Missus Mary said as she removed the simple halter and stroked Bonnie's nose. Bonnie tossed her head and butted at Mary's shoulder, but not hard enough to hurt her. The young woman went to the feed bin and took up two scoops into the pail, shaking it into Bonnie's trough. Then she did the same for Pike. The stalls were clean and laid with fresh hay: Nate and Elijah had seen to that. Bethel made sure the horses were well supplied with water, and Missus Mary checked twice that the stall gates were closed. Then together they shut the back door. Bethel collected her lantern, and Mary leaned over the wagon box, groping under the driver's seat for something.

"Where on earth did he… here it is!" she said, more to herself than to Bethel. She emerged, scrimshaw comb askew and curls coming loose of their pins, with Mister Cullen's good hat in her hand. She dusted it lovingly and smiled. "Poor dear, I'm afraid he's _very_ drunk. Mr. Ainsley is generous with his hospitality, and of course Cullen isn't accustomed to spirits like he once was." She looked up at Bethel. "I don't think he enjoyed himself nearly as much as I did," she said softly.

"Even did he have the bes' of times," said Bethel; "he'd want to know you 'joyed it more. Watchin' them he loves be happy make him happies' of all."

They moved together out of the stable, and closed the big doors on the backwards buggies and horses who were drowsily munching on their small extra measure of corn. Bethel moved to lead the way back to the house, but Missus Mary quickened her pace to walk beside her. This wasn't any more fitting than wearing a slave's clothes – even her best clothes – and seeing to the horses, but Bethel said nothing. There was something in the lady's demeanor that prevented her from speaking out.

"You taught him that, didn't you?" Missus Mary said softly, pausing when they reached the veranda steps. "To look first to the happiness of those he loves. To love the way he does."

Bethel looked at the sweet, earnest face and the tender blue eyes, and she shook her head. "I taught him his prayers an' his table manners an' how to button his britches," she said. "An' ol' Mist' Bohannon, he taught him readin' an' dancin' an' shootin' an' the like. But ain't nobody got to teach that boy how to love. He a good boy, Missus Mary, an' spite of all his troubles the world ain't spoiled him yet. Even when he ain't happy, he still a good boy."

And she walked up the steps and led her mistress into the house.

_*discidium*_

Mary ascended the stairs in stocking feet, a wary apparition in her white underthings. She had removed Bethel's dress in the parlor, and the old woman had loosened her stays for her. Now, with a candle in her hand she slipped quietly past the door of the nursery, standing ever so slightly ajar, and moved down to the door to the main bedroom. She stepped into the moonlit space and paused, unable to keep from smiling.

As he had been told Cullen had removed his evening clothes and placed them carefully over the back of the chair in the corner. Then he had completely negated his efforts to keep them from becoming rumpled by flopping down on top of them. He was asleep in the chair, snoring faintly, his head bent so far over its back that the tip of his nose pointed straight for the ceiling. One arm dangled over the armrest, fingers half-curled only a few inches above the floor, and the other was wrapped loosely around the small, nightshirt-clad figure perched upon his lap. Cullen had managed to get down to his underclothes before being interrupted, but Gabe had reached under Pappy's arm to pull the silver watch from the waistcoat pocket and he was turning it in his hands to catch the beam of moonlight reflected back by Mary's mirror.

Attention captured by the glow of her candle, the child looked up and grinned. "Mama!" he said happily. He jerked his chin in an uncanny imitation of Bethel. "Pappy sleepin'."

"I see that, dearest," Mary whispered, setting the candle on the table by the bed and approaching the strange tableau. "Why are you out of bed?"

"I heared a noise," Gabe told her solemnly. "_Bump_, _THUMP!_ Bet'l say I de man of de house when Pappy gone, so I get up to look. If it a bear, I goin' shoot it." He pointed at her dressing table, where his little popgun sat next to her hairbrush.

"I see. It wasn't a bear, was it?" asked Mary.

"No, ma'am," said Gabe, shaking his head in a most serious manner. "It Pappy. He home! Sleepin' now, dough," he added regretfully, taking one hand off the watch so he could poke at his father's ribs. Cullen snorted shallowly and stirred, but did not awake. Gabe gave a long-suffering sigh and patted his father's breastbone. "He tired. He work hard today, Mama?"

"Yes he did, dearest, though not in the usual way," Mary said. "Come here and let's get you back to bed."

"Where your pretty clothes?" Gabe asked, hopping down from Cullen's lap and padding over to take her hand. The watch refused to come with him, affixed as it was to the vest pinned under the sleeping man, and Gabe let it fall. It landed on Cullen's thigh.

"I took them off downstairs where Bethel could help me. Tomorrow you can help put the gown back in its box so it's ready for the next party," Mary told him as they stepped out into the corridor. "Were you a good boy for Bethel tonight?"

"Good boy," Gabe agreed. "I help shell dem peas. 'Ottie say it a _mountain_ of peas, an' we shell…" His story was cut short by an enormous yawn that stopped him dead in his tracks. He scrubbed his eyes with one little fist. He stood for a moment, dazed, then slipped his hand out of Mary's and lifted both arms in a gesture of entreaty. "Carry me, Mama?" he asked sleepily.

They were only three steps from his door, but Mary was happy to oblige. She bent her knees and gathered him onto her hip, and he wrapped his small arms about her neck. She drank in the sweet baby-scent of him and wondered how much longer it would linger, before he began to smell like a growing boy instead. She used her knee to push open the door and lowered him gently onto his bed. He promptly rolled onto his stomach and nuzzled his pillow while she straightened the tousled bedclothes and tucked him in.

"Goodnight, my darling," she whispered, stroking his curls as she bent to kiss him.

"Ain't we goin' pray?" asked Gabe in a thick, drowsy voice.

Bethel would have done his bedtime prayers with him, but in Gabe's mind this was a fresh bedtime and required its own benediction. Smiling at this adorable piece of infant logic, Mary knelt down by the bed and folded her hands where Gabe could see them.

"_Now I lay me down to sleep_," she began. Somnolently and with a voice almost as thick and slurring as that of his inebriated father, Gabe joined in. "_I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take._"

Mary bowed briefly over her hands and said; "Amen."

"'Men," mumbled Gabe. "An' God bless Pappy an' Mama an' Bet'l an' Lottie. An' Meg an' 'Lijah an' Nate an' Pike an' Bonnie an' Jeb an' them derned mules, an' the cows an' the chickens an' the new kittens an' Gran'ma up in Heaven. Amen. An' the hogs," he added hurriedly.

Then almost immediately he was fast asleep, leaving Mary – who always had to keep from laughing when he came in his litany to his father's frequent plowing time invective, "them derned mules" – to pick herself up off the floor and slip quietly from the room. She had not been aware of any new kittens, but the barn cats roamed the plantation with impunity and bred as they pleased. So long as the kittens in question grew up to be capable mousers they were welcome, and no doubt it had been Lottie who had found them and shown them to Gabe. Perhaps she could speak to Cullen about bringing one of them into the house. A kitten was a suitable companion for a small boy, and Gabe would dote upon a pet of his own.

Stepping back into her bedroom, Mary was faced again with the sight of her sprawling husband, racked upon the chair in a position he was sure to feel in the morning. She drew near and picked up the watch. Feeling the clicking of the mechanism against her hand she pressed the little tab that caused it to spring open and tilted the face towards the candlelight. She had expected it to be silent in her grasp; it had wound down during backbreaking first week of tobacco-topping and had been dormant since. But Cullen had obviously taken the opportunity to wind it and set it by one of the Ainsleys' clocks. She looked at the time. It was nearly two o'clock: not quite four hours before Cullen had to be up to bolt down his predawn breakfast before the day's work began. Mary settled the watch on the edge of the chair and rested her palm on her husband's cheek.

"Cullen," she said softly. Then, a little louder; "_Cullen_."

He snorted and stiffened into a half-hearted flailing attempt to straighten. His eyes opened to slits and he made a vague grunting sound.

"Come on," Mary said, sliding her fingers around to the back of his head and easing it upright for him. He maintained that position for only a moment before his chin drooped to his chest instead. "We need to get you into bed. Just a few steps."

"Bed?" he muttered leadenly.

"Yes, bed." She lifted his left arm across her shoulders, and got her right between his shoulder blades and the trousers flung over the back of the chair. "You need to stand up, Cullen: I can't lift you all on my own."

His knees contracted and his feet shuffled, the left one skidding too far and tucking up under the chair, while the right one slid sideways instead of back. His head drooped against her breast, still cupped in her loosened corset, and he exhaled heavily. Mary could smell the liquor on his breath, and she could not help but wrinkle her nose a little.

"Try again," she coaxed. "You'll rest better in bed."

He made a valiant effort, and with Mary tugging him forward as he pushed off with his legs, he managed to get out of the chair. He was leaning heavily upon her, and then he opened his eyes again, further this time, and blinked deliberately. "Mary?" he said.

"Yes."

He straightened, unsteady but determined, and dragged his arm off of her shoulder. He looked bewilderedly around the room and then stumbled to the bed, clinging to the footboard as he worked his way around to his side. Mary ran fleetly around him so that she could pull the covers back, and he flopped down onto the feather tick, stomach down. As Gabe had done he buried his face in his pillow, rubbing his cheek against it until he found a comfortable spot. His left leg he had managed to get onto the bed, and he made a feeble attempt to hoist his right one. Mary took hold of his ankle to guide it as the muscles grew taut. She laid it gently by its mate and then stripped off his socks. They were his only silk pair, one heel carefully darned. She smoothed them and moved to put them on the chair with his other fine clothes. These too she straightened, though they were already creased, and then returned to Cullen's side to draw the bedclothes over him. His eyes were tightly closed and his lips drawn into a thin line.

"I'm drunk," he said, sounding almost surprised.

"Yes," she said, in a cheerful and matter-of-fact voice that made him squint up at her.

"You ain't mad?" he asked.

"No," Mary promised. "It was your night to enjoy yourself. _Did_ you enjoy yourself?"

"I enjoyed you," he mumbled, unaware of how indelicate he sounded. "You's one hell of a dancer."

He relaxed against the pillow and Mary thought he had drifted off to sleep, when suddenly he tensed, rolling onto his side and reaching out to seize her wrist. His eyes were open now, shining with great intensity in the moonlight falling from behind her. "I ain't goin' let you go hungry, you hear me?" he said. "Even if I got to mortgage everything I got, even if I got to go crawling on my knees to that bastard, I ain't goin' let you go hungry!"

Mary was startled, both by the words and by the urgency with which they were spoken. But being the mother of a small child had taught her to remain calm in the face of another's agitation, and she managed to keep her voice gentle and melodious as she bent to smooth his hair away from his forehead. "Of course you won't," she soothed. "You never have. Now do go to sleep, Cullen. Morning comes early."

He settled under her touch, but still shook his head petulantly as he settled back against the mattress. "I can feed my family," he protested, his words running together. "God dammit, I can feed my family…"

"You can. Of course you can. Hush now: go to sleep." Mary petted his head and ran her other hand soothingly along his spine, just as she would have done to comfort Gabe in the wake of some imagined horror. Gradually he quieted, snuffling as he breathed into the well-plumped pillow, and his breathing leveled off. At last, almost certain that he was asleep, Mary withdrew from the bed.

She unhooked her corset and laid it out to air for morning, then untied her petticoat and took off her chemise and let her pantalets fall to the floor. She slipped into her nightgown, buttoning it deftly to the throat and bent to recover her cast-off undergarments. She folded the petticoat over her arm and laid it in the wicker hamper behind the door. The chemise followed, and she straightened the legs of her pantalets. She was about to set them down when her eye caught something she had not thought to look for. There was a small dark stain at the top of the left leg, where the garment was split to accommodate necessary conveniences without disrobing. Fingers trembling, she spread the cloth and tilted it to the light. Then she thrust the pantalets deep among the other soiled linens and hurriedly blew out the candle.

She sank down upon the braided rug beside the bed, and drew her knees up to her chest, hugging them to her. The merriment and strains of the evening were forgotten. The joy of dancing with her husband, the pleasant conversations with Doctor Whitehead and the young man from Kemper County, the awkward and unpleasant waltz with Mr. Sutcliffe, and Verbena's sweet and very friendly goodnight disappeared. The sense of pride she had felt in helping Bethel with the horses, the amusement at her son's nocturnal escapade, and her concern over Cullen's semiconscious outburst evaporated. There was only that awful, gaping sense of loss: that void inside of her that she had thought she had healed, or at least covered over and buried deep laid bare and raw again. That anguish that, she realized now, would never quite desert her if she lived a hundred years. Mary buried her head in her tightly crossed arms and wept, silently and convulsively, until she was too worn out to weep any longer. Then she picked herself up and fetched the little rag-bag from its hiding place at the back of her underwear drawer. She did what she had to do and slipped into bed beside her sleeping husband, utterly spent and yet wakeful with heartache.

She had started her courses again.


	21. Shrewd Dealing

**Chapter Twenty-One: Shrewd Dealing**

Thursday was the day for churning, and after the breakfast dishes were cleared away Bethel went down to the springhouse to bring up the cream that had been collected through the week. In summertime the cows gave generously, and there was plenty of milk: for drinking and baking, for cream and butter and for cheese making when they could get a bit of rennet, with a good share left over to give to the hogs to fatten them up and make the feed corn stretch farther. Bethel was always able to fill the six large tin jugs with the best skimmings of cream without taking from any other share of the milk. She brought them into the kitchen one at a time, strong thin arms straining under the weight, and set them close to the stove. The day was hot and growing hotter, and Mary was glad: a hot day meant the butter would form faster, and with less dashing.

While Bethel made the wearisome trips up from the creek, Mary scrubbed out the tall churn. It had been thoroughly washed after last week's work, of course, but it needed to be free from dust and perfectly clean before they could begin. In the big boiling pot she scalded the butter molds and the heavy oaken butter dash, and she wiped the kitchen table and measured out salt from the rapidly-emptying keg. Gabe was out in the barn with Lottie, visiting the litter of kittens. His absence from the house left Mary feeling strangely bereft, as though he too had been taken from her.

When the cream was all set down to warm, Mary and Bethel each took hold of one handle of the first jug that had been brought, and emptied it into the churn. Bethel placed the dasher and the stout wooden lid, and the hard work of churning began. They took it in turns: one beating the cream with the heavy rod while the other sat in the back doorway where the heat was not so fierce and worked at stringing the two pecks of green beans that they intended to pickle that afternoon. When it was Mary's turn to churn she could think of nothing but keeping her feet firmly planted and forcing her arms to lift again and again, fighting the thickening cream and the weight of the dasher. As Bethel had prophesied she was sore, but from her freshly-resumed monthly course instead of the miscarriage, and she was very quiet as she worked. But Bethel, stronger despite her age and far more used to such work, sang as she hefted the dasher. She knew dozens of old Negro songs, simple of tune and strong of rhythm; perfectly suited to the hard and repetitive labor, with the thump of wood against wood pounding like a drum in time to the melody.

Mary listened, glad of the distraction from her unhappy thoughts, but she did not dare to sing even when she picked up on the chorus. These songs were so unlike the ballads and the rollicking popular songs that had flourished in New York. They were stirring and almost visceral in their swinging repetition, but there was also a fierceness to them: a bold defiance of work, of weariness, of the drudgery of daily life. It made Mary uncomfortable, though she could not think why.

As the butter thickened the speed of the churning slowed, and tired arms dragged against the growing resistance within the churn. It was Bethel, of course, who declared when the batch was finished, and how she knew Mary could not quite tell. But she never missed her guess: when she lifted the lid the butter would be gathered into a lump that bobbed sleepily in the buttermilk. Bethel would scoop it out into one of her wooden mixing bowls with the butter paddle, and then while she emptied the churn of the residual liquid Mary would rinse the butter. They used fresh well water for this, as cold as they could manage on such a warm day. Mary poured water over the butter and tipped it off into a slop pail, over and over again. When it began to run clear she would press the butter with the paddle, splitting and spreading the lump and rinsing again and again until the last of the buttermilk was gone from it. She could not squeeze it in her fists, though this would have been easier, because the heat of her hands would melt the butter and render it unfit to be used. In the midst of this process she would stop briefly to help Bethel pour off another jugful of cream for the next batch, and the process would begin again.

They were halfway through the third churning when Lottie and Gabe came in from the stable. Lottie helped the little boy to stand upon the stool and clean his hands at the washbasin, then she sat him at the table. Mary was churning and Bethel was busy with the beans. Lottie poured a cup of fresh buttermilk for Gabe and cut a thick slice from the dwindling loaf of bread that was meant to last until tomorrow night. She spread it generously with sorghum-sweetened strawberry jam and put it on a plate for the child. Gabe smacked his lips happily and bit into it.

"What do you say to Lottie?" Mary asked, a little breathless with the effort of keeping the dasher moving against the ache in her elbows and shoulders.

"I like jam," Gabe said. There was a brilliant red smear at the corner of his mouth, and his questing finger found it, scooping up the sweet preserve and depositing it upon the tip of his tongue instead.

"Gabe," Mary said, a little more firmly. "What do you say to Lottie when she fixes you something nice to eat?"

"Dank you, 'Ottie," he said, catching on at last. Lottie beamed happily at him, but she did not sit down beside him as a Northern nursemaid would have.

"Lottie, you may have some as well if you wish," said Mary.

"They's some of yest'day's pone in the pantry under the blue checked cloth," said Bethel. "He'p youself."

"You may have bread if you want it, Lottie," Mary said. She was contradicting Bethel's instructions, and she knew the black woman would not approve, but she was in a curious mood today. Lottie was caring for Gabe when Mary could not spare the time, and Mary was very grateful to know her child was in such capable young hands. Bread made of wheat flour was a treat for Lottie, for cornmeal was the starch customarily given to slaves.

Lottie hurried back to the breadbox, halting with the loaf in one hand and the knife midair in the other when Bethel said; "We's runnin' low on flour, Missus Mary. You oughts to save that there for the family."

"There's plenty for Cullen's supper, and Gabe and I can have pone with our dinner," said Mary. "It will make a pleasant change. Go on, Lottie: have some bread and jam, and some buttermilk, too. You know we always make more of that than we can possibly use."

This was certainly true. Bethel usually kept back a pitcher of buttermilk for immediate consumption, and enough to make buttermilk biscuits the following morning, as well as filling a gallon jug for Meg to use or dole out to the others, but most of it was given to the hogs. In this heat buttermilk did not keep long without spoiling, and even in the springhouse it would often curdle.

Lottie prepared her own snack and stood next to Gabe to eat it. The little boy was now watching his mother with great interest.

"Mama, may I try?" he asked.

Mary could not help laughing, just a little. "Oh, darling, your arms are much too small to lift the dash," she said. When you are older you may."

"My arms is strong," said Gabe, pointing at his bicep to show her. "I climbded all de way up de ladder, didn' I, 'Ottie?"

"Which ladder?" Mary asked, surprised at this. She knew that Gabe liked to climb the fence rails or the slatted stall doors in the stable, but she did not much like the thought of him attempting to climb a ladder.

"Only the one in the barn, Missus," said Lottie. "Up to the haylof'. Them kittens is up there, you see."

"I see…" Mary was not sure this was at all reassuring. The hayloft was a good twelve or fourteen feet above the barn floor, and there was no rail to keep a child from wandering off the edge.

"Don' worry," said Lottie. "I steps jus' behind him all the time he climbin'. He not goin' fall."

"Thank you, Lottie," said Mary. She was perspiring heavily now and her arms protested every attempt at lifting the dash. "Gabe, you mustn't go up into the hayloft unless Lottie is with you. Do you understand?"

"Yassm," said Gabe around a mouthful of bread and jam. "How you get butter dat way, Mama? You jus' hittin' milk."

"That's how you make butter," Mary said. "You put cream in the churn and hit it until it thickens."

"But why?" asked Gabe.

"I'm not sure," admitted Mary. "Bethel? Do you know why?"

"'Cause that's how folks always done it," Bethel said, tossing the bean she was holding into the pot at her side and getting to her feet. "You give me that, Missus Mary: it my turn."

"But _why?_" Gabe pressed. "Why you get butter when you hit dat cream?"

"Honey, I don' know," said Bethel as she shooed Mary's hands away from the dasher and took over the rhythm of steady pounding. Mary retreated to the chair in the doorway and filled her apron with beans.

"Does Pappy know?" said Gabe. "I can ask him. I goin' ask him."

He slid off the bench and under the table before Lottie could stop him, crawling between the legs and scrambling to his feet as he hurried for the door. Mary put out her arm to stop him before he could escape the house.

"You can't go to see Pappy, love," she said. "He's cutting timber with Nate and it isn't safe."

Gabe's lower lip quivered and he stamped one small bare foot. "I want to!" he declared. "I never gets to see Pappy no more, 'less'n he tired out or he goin' 'way. Why he got to work so hard?"

"He a growed man, that why," said Lottie. "He can' jus' sit in the house an' play all day." She frowned. "I don' see why he don' jus' buy wood, though."

"You a fool chil'," Bethel said darkly. "There ain't money to buy what we can make or git ourselves. Now you leave this here boy with us, an' go see how the garden be. Is them carrots fit for pickin' yet?"

"Some of 'em," said Lottie, finishing off her tin cup of buttermilk and picking up Gabe's empty plate.

"Then pick some," said Bethel. "We goin' have carrots with our dinner."

Lottie slipped past Mary with a hurried curtsey, and ran out across the dooryard. Mary watched until she disappeared around the corner of the house, her fingers still stringing beans of their own accord. Working the butter churn with seemingly tireless arms, Bethel began to sing again. Gabe, clapping excitedly in time to the rise and fall of the butter dash, joined in with his own nonsensical and sometimes hopelessly garbled words to the familiar tunes.

_*discidium*_

In the shade of the trees Cullen's headache was not so fearsome, though the ringing of the axe did resonate deep into his skull. He and Nate were taking only the slender trees, felling them quickly and stripping the branches before hefting the logs between them and carrying them over to the clearing where the mules grazed lazily in the wagon harness. It would save work later, because the lengths of wood would only require one or two splittings to get it down to a useable size. It took a great deal of fuel to keep the two cookstoves burning, and before winter Cullen wanted to lay by enough for the fireplaces as well. Then there was the wood for the tobacco barn, and the fire that would burn day and night without stop until the whole crop was cured. He understood now why wood fetched the price it did: it took several days' work to fell and cut and split a single cord, and that was just the river-bottom birch that grew in great abundance on his land. Oak was tougher, and consequently burned longer, but it did not sell for much more. He supposed he ought to be grateful that he was a planter instead of a woodsman.

The truth was, though, that this was more enjoyable work. He liked the whistle of the axe through the air, and the satisfying shudder as the blade dug into the wood. It was hard labor toting the felled trunks, but he could keep his back straight and walk tall while he did it. And the splitting, though ceaseless, required a swift, precise stroke that seldom went awry. He was good with an axe. He was almost useless with a scythe or a plow.

He let the tree fall, tracing its arc with his eyes, and grinned faintly as it crashed into the underbrush. Somewhere nearby a squirrel chittered noisily, scolding him. It wasn't much fun for a tree-dweller, Cullen supposed, to watch a giant with an axe taking out birch after birch and hauling them away stripped and dead. But what of it? The creek bottom was full of trees: hundreds, likely thousands of them. And he left the tallest ones standing. From where he stood he could see at least a dozen saplings that in another two or three years would be just as large as the one he had just felled.

Rather than set about cutting off the branches at once, he picked his way up the sloping bank to the wagon. He fetched himself a dipper of water from the pail beneath the seat and drained it quickly. He was exceedingly thirsty, and no matter how much he drank he could not quite get the sour taste of the morning after out of his mouth. He had drunk far too much the night before, and he had been paying for it all day. At least the dizziness was gone now, as was the vague feeling that he might empty his stomach at any moment, though the headache lingered and with it the cloudy fatigue. Still he couldn't wish away the night of self-indulgence, and was not at all sure that he would want to if given the chance. He remembered most of what had come to pass at Boyd's gathering, and he thought he might not have dragged himself through parts of it without the liquor to warm his blood. He had had his cheerful moments, certainly, chiefly when whirling around the dance floor with Mary. But what he remembered with greater clarity were the moments of discomfiture, displeasure, and downright humiliation. Having young George White offer him charity – that had been uncomfortable. The realization that he was helpless against Abel Sutcliffe's slander had been miserable. But seeing that pompous and brutish and venal old man dancing with Mary… that had been almost more than Cullen could bear to see.

It made him sick to think of that brute, all arrogance and ill-concealed proclivities, laying hands upon his wife, his sweet and beautiful Mary who never had an unkind thought in her head. It did not matter that Cullen had been in the room the whole time, watching them ceaselessly as they waltzed. It was the principle of the thing. And a waltz, of all dances: slower, more intimate, made for talking. Cullen didn't know what the man had said. He wasn't sure whether he believed Mary's version to be complete. What he did know is that even if Mary maybe hadn't realized it, Sutcliffe's words were sure to have been loaded with malice and scorn. It had left Cullen feeling beaten and shamed just to watch it, and the subsequent delight of taking almost all of the last dances of the night with his beautiful Mary had been tainted by it.

He had only foggy memories of the end of the evening: of Boyd, extorting from him a promise to call more often; of Verbena saying they must get together for a small, friendly supper; of Mary suggesting that perhaps the Ainsleys might like to call on the Bohannons in return some Sunday afternoon. He dimly recalled leading Mary out to the buggy, and questioning Pip at length about the care Pike and Bonnie had received that evening. And taking the reins in his gloved hands, and watching the patches of moonlight on the road. He remembered Gabe coming in upon him as he was undressing, at first drowsy and anxious and then briefly talkative, and then…

Then only the morning's miserable awakening, with his head spinning and his mouth full of sand, and Mary gently stroking the hair off his brow as she called to him and reminded him that Bethel would be laying on breakfast. Somehow Cullen had hauled his bones out of bed and into his work clothes, and he had stumbled downstairs to find hot coffee and hominy waiting while Bethel finished preparing the rest of the meal. He had eaten ravenously, his stomach no doubt stretched from its exertions at the bountiful Ainsley table, but by the time he had finished with the horses he had been regretting his appetite. It was only in the last hour or so that the meal had finally ceased to lie like a stone in his stomach.

He shouldered his axe again and returned to the tree. Stripping off the branches was quick work, and he shouted for Nate. There was a crash somewhere off to his left, and shortly afterward the black man came shambling over.

"Take that end," Cullen said, nodding towards the top of the trunk. He drove his axe into a stump and bent his knees to get a hold on the base. "One, two, hoist…"

Both grunting with the effort they got the log off of the ground and laid across their shoulders. Nate had the lighter end, but he also had the harder part of the toting: trailing behind while Cullen climbed the embankment. The heap of logs in the wagon bed was not much below shoulder-height now, and it was easy enough to unload their cargo. Together they pushed it until it was more or less even with the others. The wagon box groaned a little, but the mules, still munching, scarcely even seemed to notice.

"That's about a full load, I think," said Cullen. "You got one more down?"

"One more," Nate agreed impassively. "It ain't bare yet."

"We'll strip her together," said Cullen. He squinted through the glowing canopy to find the sun. "It's just about dinnertime."

"Then back in the tobacco 'til sundown." The other man's deep voice was grimmer now. "Every damn day you got us out in that tobacco."

"I discussed it with Elijah," Cullen said, leading the way back down to the creek bottom to retrieve his axe before gesturing that Nate should show him where the last log was waiting. "He agreed it was preferable to work it when it's dry, and the dew's still thick 'til noon."

"Plants still wet all day," Nate argued.

"Yes, but not as wet. We been staying dryer, haven't we? I mean apart from Monday and Tuesday: that couldn't be helped. It ain't a perfect solution, but it's workable. Elijah said—"

"Don' matter what Elijah say," grumbled Nate. "It mis'able to be out there ev'ry day, an' we all goin' get sick of it 'fore long."

Cullen halted in his tracks. When Nate kept walking he squared his shoulders under the weight of the axe and let out a sharp; "_Hey!_"

Nate halted and turned slowly. When he had the Negro's eye, Cullen demanded; "You got something you want to say to me?"

"Wha's to say? You done discussed it all with Elijah."

The tone was deliberately flat, but there was a belligerent cast to the man's posture and a gleam of defiance in his eyes. Cullen frowned.

"And you think I oughta discussed it with you instead, is that it?" he asked unsympathetically. "Elijah got more experience than you, and what's more he's the foreman."

"You ain't got no need for a foreman," argued Nate. "You ain't got but three field hands, and one of them a woman. Don' go pretendin' you's something you ain't."

"I'll tell you what I ain't," said Cullen. He wanted to close the distance between them, but that would look too much like he was moving into the other man's territory. "I ain't a man that's going to stand for one of his slaves making trouble. Now, if you got a grievance you got a right to voice it, but putting on like you don't intend to do as I say is another matter, 'specially in front of the others. You got to set an example, you hear me?"

"Who for?" snorted Nate. "You jus' said Elijah above me, an' Meg got stars in her eyes when she look at you, on 'count of you treat her like she's a woman an' not jus' some field hand. And there ain't nobody else."

"There's Lottie," said Cullen. "She got to learn how to grow up right, an' it don' do her no favors to let her see you balking in harness. Her father ain't around to teach her how to behave: she goin' look to you an' Elijah for that."

This seemed to make an impression upon Nate, for he took four hurried steps towards Cullen before halting. Cullen kept his expression guarded, fingering the handle of the axe almost boredly, but he was alert to any sign that he might be coming out ahead in the exchange.

"I know she ain't got her father around," he said. "I look out for that girl the bes' I can."

"So do I," said Cullen. "She's my girl."

The darkie's jaw tightened and his nostrils flared with the passing of his breath. Something lanced through his eyes, but it vanished so quickly that Cullen could not even say conclusively that it had been anything more than a trick of the light, much less identify the emotion at play.

"You got a grievance or not?" he asked.

"You got us workin' too hard," Nate declared. "Ev'ry damned one of us. The missus washin' clothes when she jus' out her sickbed, pickin' beans an' makin' butter an' even unhitchin' them horses. Old Bethel doin' the work of cook an' housemaid an' head woman an' mammy all at once. You, me an' Elijah puttin' in fifteen hours a day mos' days, an' Meg not much less'n that on top her women's work. An' Lottie helpin' in the house an' the garden an' the yams, an' prob'ly goin' get in with the corn, too. Only one on this place ain't run ragged is that li'l boy. How long you think we's goin' be able to keep this up?"

The frantic protestation that he did not know almost sprang from Cullen's lips, but he caught it just in time. Nate's words betrayed his exhaustion as his bearing never did, and spoke to his secret anxiety. If he guessed the degree to which Cullen shared in both he would lose faith in his master, and maybe hope in the struggle. That would be disastrous.

"You got some other way of doing things?" Cullen asked. "You got some better idea for getting the work done?"

Nate's mouth opened swiftly, then closed again. His full lips shriveled to a thin line, and at last he took his head. "No. No, sir. I ain't."

"I see. Well, we've just got to keep on going this way, then, don't we?" said Cullen. "I thought maybe it'd take some of the burden off if we didn't need to work long days in the tobacco, and Elijah agreed. We'll try it another week, and if it turns out it's worse like this we can go back to bein' out there at dawn in the damp and the dew. But the work got to get done somehow, don't it?"

'Yassir," said Nate slowly, his shoulders slumping in defeat – not in the debate with his master, Cullen thought, so much as in the fight against bitterness. "Yassir, it got to. But in the old days…"

"In the old days there were thirty people working them fields, and all that pasture was cultivated," said Cullen. "You tell me how I can get my hands on twent-six men and plow up three hundred and fifty acres overnight, and then we can talk 'bout how it was in the old days. And you tell me, Nate. Are you really worse off now? I know I am, the plantation is, even Bethel is, but are _you_? Think about it and be honest."

The nearest thing to a scowl that Cullen had seen on his one-time friend in years spread now across Nate's face. His brown eyes darkened almost to black and his brow furrowed. His hands balled suddenly into fists so tight that his knuckles paled. For the span of two breaths he seemed at war with himself. Then he opened his fists and flexed his fingers, looking down at them.

"Leastways in the old days a man could get a new pair of boots when he start wearin' through his soles," he muttered.

Cullen restrained the urge to scrub at his aching temples. "You'll get your boots when the tobacco's sold," he said wearily. "Not a thing I can do about it 'til then." He thought of his son, now barefoot because his little shoes did not fit, and he felt sick. Try as he might, he couldn't quite take care of his people.

"When the tobacco come in," said Nate, shaking his head. "Ev'ything we need we goin' get when the tobacco come in. Mist' Cullen, you soun' like a farmer. One them down the Sowashee with nothin' but ten acres an' a spavined mule."

Cullen flinched as though he had been struck. Coming from one of his own folks, this stung worse than any barb thrust by Abel Sutcliffe or his cohorts. He had thought – had hoped – that his earnest efforts and his determination to ask nothing of them that he would not do himself might keep the respect of his slaves even if he was no longer an idle planter dispatching commands from the luxury of a well-appointed house. But here was Nate, once a better friend to him than any white boy, resenting his poverty and disdaining him for his struggles. It shriveled his battered pride and filled him with impotent frustration and a feeble, wretched anger.

"I might sound like a farmer," he snapped; "but I'm still your master, and you best stop this talk right now. Let's get on and strip that tree. You ain't stopping to eat until that wagon's unloaded and the mules get rubbed down."

Nate stared at him for a disconcerted instant, and then blinked. "Yes, Massa," he said crisply. "She right over here."

He led the way and Cullen followed. Both unloading the wagon and seeing to the team were two-man jobs, and he could hardly leave Nate to struggle on his own: they would both have to wait for their simple dinner. But at least he had beaten back the rebellion in the other man's eyes, if only temporarily.

_*discidium*_

Mary came into the parlor while Cullen was counting the meagre cache of money kept in the drawer of the secretary. He was lost in idle, worried figuring and did not notice the intrusion until she stepped up behind him and placed two letters on the writing surface. He looked at them, for a moment perplexed. They had long since used the last of their envelopes, and she had folded the papers carefully in upon themselves and closed them with homemade sealing wax. The mixture, made of beeswax from old candle-ends, pine resin and turpentine, had a grubby look to it, but it worked well enough – and the entire packet was likely to be grimy by the time it reached New York or Maine. Cullen sat back from his stooped position over the coins and banknotes, and picked up the plump epistles.

"One for Mother, one for Jeremiah?" he said conversationally, tucking them into the inner pocket of his topcoat.

"Yes," Mary said.

"You remember to send my love?" Cullen asked.

She smiled for him. "Of course."

A week had passed since the Ainsley party, and the time had been nothing more than a blur of summer work and gnawing worries. Nate had given no trouble since their talk in the creek bush, but he was worn out and Cullen could see Meg and Elijah were too. They all worked as hard as they could and as fast as they could, but there was always more to be done and the need to constantly coddle the tobacco sapped strength they might have spent elsewhere. Mary and Bethel and Lottie were doing a remarkable job of managing the garden without much additional help, but Cullen thought they too were flagging. Mary in particular always seemed to look tired and sad, except when she saw him watching and put on one of her brave smiles. She had even begged off of church on Sunday, and had spent the day reading quietly to Gabe instead. In his scant moments of free thinking time between fretting about the tobacco and imagining the dozens of calamities, both material and fiscal, that might visit them between now and November, Cullen worried about her. She hadn't been herself since she had taken ill, and that was a fact.

"So we need salt and five pounds of sugar for laying in some good preserves," he said, ticking off his mental list on his fingers. "A little dried cod if the price is favorable, but we absolutely don't need any more flour. That sound right to you?"

"We don't need cod either," said Mary. "Bethel's just got it into her head that Gabe ought to have more fish. I can't think why: he's a child, not an alligator." She hesitated, her expression wavering. "Cullen, about Jeremiah's letter…"

"I'll send it postage paid, don't worry," he promised. He did not much want to, since the man had not been considerate enough to do the same, but he would for Mary's sake.

"It isn't that," she said. "When he wrote to me, he wrote to propose we might come to Bangor to visit."

"We can't," Cullen said hoarsely. The words came out by reflex, before he could soften them or modulate his tone. "I ain't got no money for rail fares, even if we could be spared off the place."

"I know," Mary said softly, and try as he might he could not help seeing the glimmer of regret in her eyes. "I've written to tell him it's quite impossible for us to travel, with summertime so busy and Gabe still so young."

"That's all right, then," Cullen exhaled. The excuse of the small child was a welcome one. He didn't know how much of their situation Mary had disclosed to her family, but he didn't like the idea of admitting their penury quite so blatantly. Even if such a long journey was an extravagant expense even for a well-to-do man, he preferred to keep his famished finances well away from Jeremiah Tate's scrutiny.

His relief dissolved almost instantly when Mary added, tremulously; "So I told him that he and Frances are welcome to visit us if they wish."

Cullen very nearly choked on his own tongue, straightening up as far as his aching back would allow and twisting on the chair to gawk at her. He managed to curb himself before blurting out that they were most certainly _not_ welcome, not while he had breath in his body. "I don't know that's such a good idea," he managed, much more diplomatically. "Your brother and I ain't never got on that well."

"I know that," said Mary. "But he writes… he writes that he's concerned we might not have the opportunity to see one another again for a long while, with matters as they are at present."

"Matters as they are?" Cullen echoed. "He's an abolitionist and we own slaves. Ain't that matter enough to prevent us from seeing one another?"

"He means the political situation," Mary murmured, avoiding his eyes. "I don't… he doesn't say it, but he seems to think the sla… the _Southern_ states really might secede from the Union. If they do… if Mississippi does… and anyhow he hasn't even met Gabe yet, and I could hardly refuse his invitation without extending our own, and I know you don't like him, but…"

"He don't like me," he told her plainly. "And from what he said when we got married I thought he didn't much care for you anymore, either." That was what he really couldn't forgive. The differences in philosophy and temperament between two men of vastly disparate upbringings was one thing, but the hard and hateful things Jeremiah had said to his baby sister at what should have been a joyful time still rankled deeply in Cullen's heart.

Mary stiffened at that, and such hurt appeared in her gentle eyes that Cullen had felt just about sick with guilt over his ill-chosen words. "He's my brother," she said. "He'll always love me, even when he disagrees with me or disapproves of my decisions." Then she sighed. "I'm sure he won't want to come. He couldn't possibly feel comfortable doing so with his principles, and Frances certainly wouldn't want to. She's convinced that everything south of Philadelphia is wild and dangerous and uncivilized."

Cullen was somewhat mollified by this. After all, the proposed journey was atrociously expensive, and even if Mary's father used his influence to arrange complimentary passage on the railroads most closely bound to the Tate concerns it would cost at couple hundred dollars at least. Even if he had money to burn, he doubted he would squander that sort of a sum for the privilege of spending a fortnight with Jeremiah Tate. He was quite sure the reverse was also true. There was always an outside possibility, of course, if Jeremiah truly did believe that the federal government would force secession and if he truly did want to see his sister as badly as he claimed, but it seemed remote enough.

"All right," he said. "I'm sure you done the right thing in extending the offer, even if I earnestly hope he don't take it. There anything else you need in town? Anything you _want_?"

Mary looked at him, soft eyes thoughtful. At last she shook her head. "Just drive safely and try not to get into any quarrels," she said.

"Quarrels?" He dredged up an impish grin. "What cause would I have to be getting into quarrels?" He got to his feet and kissed her, scooping the few gold coins into his hand and tipping them back into their drawer. He folded the wrinkled banknotes into his pocketbook and tucked it into his coat. "If I head out now I ought to be home in time for dinner," he said.

It was a hard thing to lose another morning's work, but as the buggy jolted over the bump near the turning and swept onto the main road Cullen was visited by a still more disquieting truth. The fact of the matter was that there was a part of him, a substantial and cowardly part, that was glad of the respite. He hated himself for it, but he could not deny it. A chance to get off on his own for a morning, even just to fetch salt and a little sugar, was a mercy in the drudgery of another dreary week. He shifted on the hard board seat, trying to find a comfortable position. His whole body ached with the tobacco-suckering pains that were going to be his constant companion from now until October. Nate was right about that: any individual day was less grueling for the variety of work and the chance to labor in clothes that were more-or-less dry instead of thoroughly sodden, but the sustained and ceaseless field labor was going to grind their spirits away.

Meridian was busy today: the boardwalks crowded and the hitching posts all but full. Cullen managed to find a place just about broad enough for his team two doors down from the grocer's, and gave them their nosebags and some quiet encouraging words before he set off towards the telegraph office. He mailed the letters and, though it galled him, sent them both postage paid as he had promised. He didn't know if it had been carelessness or meanness that had made Jeremiah Tate send them a letter without that courtesy and he did not much care. It rankled him regardless.

He stopped by his buggy to compose himself. It would not do to appear weary or disheartened or desperate. Although he had money enough in his pocket to buy what he needed if it came to that, he was hoping to charm the grocer into extending credit. What cash he had he wanted to keep against some greater future need. If Mary needed the doctor again, if they broke a plowshare putting in the winter wheat, if Nate really did wear through the soles of his boots before the harvest was in, it would be best to have a little money on hand. Cullen straightened his collar and tugged at his waistcoat and carefully wound his watch, then adjusted his hat to a jauntier angle and fixed a pleasant expression on his face. From the floor of the buggy he picked up the little crate wrapped in three layers of canvas that Bethel had given him, and he strolled down towards the shop.

It too was busy today. There was a small group of town women in their best bonnets and hoops, looking over a tray of peaches under the watchful eye of one of the shop assistants. The grocer's son was measuring out cornmeal into a sack for a rough-looking backwoods trapper with an overgrown beard. Two small boys were admiring the display of sweets while their father puzzled over an untidily scrawled list. Cullen nudged past wizened old Mr. Grice, who liked to go from store to store gossiping with the merchants, and set his load down on the countertop.

The grocer, who had been squinting at the ledger on the high clerk's desk beside the storeroom door, came ambling over. "What's this?" he asked.

"Ten pounds of best salted butter," Cullen said, unwrapping the canvas and lifting a corner of the lid. The neat and prettily molded pats, each with a raised rose on top, were separated from one another by squares of brown paper. Bethel had gone to every effort to make it look appealing.

"I ain't buying butter," said the grocer. "Get mine wholesale from the Wilkinson plantation. You could try the stationhouse. They do three meals a day for folks waiting between trains."

"I'm not looking to sell," said Cullen. "I thought maybe you'd take it in trade for a keg of salt."

The man's eyes narrowed a little as he looked Cullen over. He took in the tidy clothes, the good hat and the watch chain. Then his eyes settled on Cullen's hands. The nail beds were dark and the knuckles discolored and the backs streaked with dark tobacco stains. Monday had been the first day he had been able to wash without the homemade soap stinging skin made raw from his ill-conceived efforts with the turpentine, and he had decided that he would just have to live with the appearance of perpetually dirty hands.

"Keg of salt's three dollars," said the grocer. "I won't get more than two for ten pounds of butter, even if you ain't lying about the quality."

"I ain't lying," said Cullen. "Try it."

The grocer took a penknife from his vest pocket and shaved off a curl from the nearest pat. He popped it into his mouth and rolled his tongue against his cheek, looking almost comically pensive as he tasted. "Not bad," he said at last, putting away his blade. "I'll give you a dollar and a quarter for the lot."

This was better than Cullen had hoped, particularly as he had only brought the butter as a means of opening negotiations, but a shrewd haggler never took the first price he was offered. "It's worth at least a dollar seventy," he said. "You could charge a quarter a pound."

"Not a chance," said the grocer. "Twenty cents at most. Butter's plentiful this time of year, and a lot of folks make their own. It's only town people buy it, and not all of them."

"How 'bout this, then?" Cullen suggested. "We'll say a dollar and a half, put towards that keg of salt. Then you ain't out of pocket for the money and I don't need to take the stuff home."

The man considered this. "That sounds fair," he said. "One keg of salt, a dollar fifty."

"Thing is," said Cullen, smiling affably; "I wasn't planning on having to pay anything for it. Could we put that dollar fifty on account?"

The grocer shrugged and pulled the leather-bound account ledger from under the table. He flicked a pencil from behind his ear and licked the tip. "Name?" he said.

Cullen gave it, speaking slowly to give the shopkeeper ample time to note it. He wrote down the transaction and the total, and turned the book so that Cullen could put his mark in the margin. He signed with a tight little flourish. "Your boy can take it right out to my buggy," he said. "Black one in front of the milliner's, two matched Morgans."

The grocer turned and shouted, and a lanky young Negro man appeared at the storeroom door. The instructions were given and shortly afterward the slave appeared with a keg of salt balanced on his shoulder. He navigated deferentially through the crowd of patrons and stepped out into the street.

The grocer put the lid back on the little crate and dragged it off the countertop, swinging around to set it on his worktable. When he turned and saw that Cullen was still standing at the counter, his brow furrowed in mild surprise. "There something else you're needing, Mister?" he asked.

Cullen shrugged. "Seeing as I've got an account now," he said; "why don't you add on another three kegs of salt and five pounds of good granulated sugar? Then I'll be on my way."

For a moment the grocer's expression was stormy as he realized how he had been played, but he had extended credit and could not very well withdraw it now with no reason to suggest that this customer would prove an unsafe risk. "Nine dollars and forty cents," he muttered, opening the account book again. "Added to a dollar fifty for the first keg is ten dollars ninety cents." His eyes raked once more over Cullen, flicking thrice between the coarsened hands and the fine silver chain at his waist. "Anything else for you?"

"Gimme two peppermint sticks," said Cullen, digging out a tarnished half-dime. "But that I was expecting to pay for."

The shop-boy was back, and the grocer told him curtly that three more kegs were wanted in the same gentleman's carriage. Then he measured out five pounds of sugar into a brown paper sack, and wrapped the slender peppermint sticks in a twist of waxed paper. Cullen put the latter in his inner coat pocket and tucked the former into the crook of his left arm. He held out his right, and the grocer shook it.

"A pleasure doing business with you," Cullen said pleasantly.

The grocer grunted his grudging assent. "Hope to see you soon," he said, not without a certain arch implication in his words.

"Certainly," said Cullen. Then he turned, tipping his hat to the ladies, and stepped back out into the sunshine. He felt less worn down than he had that morning. He had struck a good bargain for the butter and he had got his supplies. The uneasiness of racking up still more debt was ameliorated a little by the security of having a little money still in his pocket against the next misadventure of the ill-starred year.


	22. Bringing in the Corn

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Bringing in the Corn**

August dragged slowly on, hot and bright and heavy with summer's ceaseless toil. In three weeks there was not a single heavy, drenching rain, but the occasional midnight shower kept the tobacco and the corn from shriveling in the sun and made the watering of the garden bearable. The peas and beans meant to be picked fresh were all harvested now: only the rows of brown beans and split peas were left, ripening and drying in the summer sun. Mary and Lottie had put in a third crop of radishes when the rows were picked bare, and the carrots meant for the horses and mules were large enough at last that it was worth unearthing a few now and then to leave in the stable for immediate use. The tomatoes, voracious for water, were now large as eggs and starting to turn color. The rows of greens were flourishing with the help of Lottie's diligent sprinkling from the heavy watering cans she now hefted with such ease. Every day she and Mary and Bethel brought in baskets of fresh and wholesome things.

Some were preserved, but more were eaten. In an effort to stretch their nonperishable stores as long as possible, the two women planned meals rich in the bounty of the garden but spare in flour, cornmeal and pork. What side meat was left Bethel kept for adding strength and flavor to the vegetables, and although Cullen and the three field hands were still provided with thin slices of the dwindling stock of ham every day the others ate eggs whenever possible. In a quiet conspiracy with Mary, Bethel put meat on the plates of the mistress and her child at those rare meals – chiefly Saturday supper and on Sunday – when Cullen was at table. Bethel still baked her weekly bread for the white family, but the morning biscuits were gone and the only grain habitually served at breakfast was the parched and boiled hominy. Richly mixed with butter though it was, it did not satisfy Mary's stomach as biscuits would, and she worried that her husband felt the absence still more keenly, laboring as hard as he did every day. But if he suffered from the change, or even noticed it, he said nothing.

In the effort to keep meals varied and nourishing, Bethel was worth her weight in gold. She knew dozens of ways to prepare the garden vegetables, and she made use of them all. From the abundant milk and cream she made rich sauces for the carrots and the parsnips; she served greens cooked with butter or with vinegar or simply blanched so that their sunshine flavor remained. She seasoned beets and young turnips with the choicest specimens from the herb beds, and served okra fried or roasted or spiced. She sent Lottie out to raid the ripening corn to make fresh succotash, and she varied it by adding peas or onions or radishes. She even had a use for the green tomatoes: slicing them into thick coins which she coated in a dusting of cornmeal and fried until they were crisp and savory.

To this myriad of Southern cooking Mary added a few favorites of her own from the book of receipts her mother's Welsh cook had gifted her on her marriage with the intention that her Mississippi servants might prepare things she was used to. As Bethel could not read and had never in her life worked from a written receipt the book had not seen much use until now, but Mary was glad of it at last. She tried her hand at making roasted beets and creamed parsnips, she experimented with a variety of uncooked salads, and she even managed to turn out a couple of egg-and-vegetable bakes that were very pleasant even without the sharp New England cheeses of her childhood.

At every meal there were three or four vegetable dishes to choose from, and even with meat and bread wanting the plates were full. Mary and Bethel took to making twice as much of any vegetable as was needed in the house, because Meg spent such long days working alongside the men that she had no time to prepare additional foodstuffs to supplement the dwindling staples. White and black, the household did not want for variety, and Mary finished every day weary but quietly proud of her efforts in the unfamiliar territory of Bethel's kitchen. She did not have, and perhaps would never have, the older woman's skill or natural talent, but she was getting along quite well for a city-bred debutante who before her marriage had never so much as brewed her own tea.

The only trouble with this diet, flavorful and undoubtedly healthful though it was, was that vegetable dishes did not have the same power to satiate that bread and meat and sweet potatoes had. Though the garden's riches meant that there was no harm in the fact that everyone ate a greater quantity of food now, such foods also did not last as long in the stomach. By the time each meal finally rolled around Mary was always ravenous, and she knew that it had to be many times worse for those who were out toiling in the tobacco. Sitting with Cullen at his late supper, always lovingly kept warm for him, became the greatest torment of her day. He would come in, filthy and exhausted from an afternoon of pulling suckers, and would scarcely find the will to wash before he hastened to the table. The weary dullness in his eyes was replaced, at least in those first few minutes, by a feverish glint of avarice, and when Bethel set his food before him he would fall upon it like a victim of famine, mad with hunger after seven hours' fasting since dinnertime. He could scarcely be dissuaded from scraping his plate, though there was always more of the vegetable dishes, if nothing else, waiting in the kitchen. Only once his stomach was full at last would he slump in his chair, his manic energy spent, and let his overworked muscles relax a little.

Quietly and without consulting anyone, Mary took to slipping into the kitchen each afternoon to prepare a little basket of food for Lottie to take down to the tobacco fields when she brought the cold water at four o'clock. It was simple picnic fare: corn pone and butter, peaches from the trees now near the end of their year's fruitfulness, cold boiled eggs and the pick of fresh carrots or radishes. Sometimes she sent a bowl of succotash as well, or okra if there was any left from the night before. The fried tomatoes made a wonderful cold treat, but they were so delicious that when Bethel made them they rarely survived to the next afternoon. Mary always tried to be sure to send enough for four hungry mouths, but day after day her offerings were devoured to the last scrap and she feared they worked on only half-satisfied. Still, after a few days of this the wild look was gone from Cullen's eyes at night and he remembered to bring his food to his mouth instead of the other way 'round.

They came to the end of the yams on the last Monday of the month, when Bethel and Mary went down to the root cellar to measure out stores for another week and found that there were only eight left in the tired old sack. It was extraordinary that they had come out exactly even, but Mary's worry over the loss of this fundamental part of their diet distracted from any wonder at the coincidence. Without the sweet potatoes there was very little truly sustaining food to put upon the table. For a few days she and Bethel offered the Irish potatoes instead, and then they too were gone. With only a little more than ten pounds of flour left, bread was the next to go so that what little remained could be saved, like the good preserves and last of the sugar and the coffee, in case of company. Cornbread joined the hominy at the Bohannon family table, but the cornmeal was also running low.

"It no use, Missus Mary," said Bethel one hot day in the second week of September. "We gots to have something to feed them men. They's workin' too hard to live on vegetables and cream."

They were out in the dooryard, bringing down clean laundry from the clotheslines while Gabe played happily with a wooden spoon and a rusted-out milk pan in the shade cast by the henhouse. Lottie was just over the fence in the garden, searching for ripe tomatoes to serve with the evening's okra. The others, of course, were sweltering in the tobacco; stooped and tired and worn down with the relentless effort to keep the plants healthy. Week after week Cullen reported that the crop looked good, and week after week Mary tried to laud him for the struggles that were obviously bearing fruit. But week after week he only shook his head and reminded her that they were still a ways from picking time, and a lot could happen in a month. His stalwart refusal even to hope for a good crop saddened Mary, for it left her wondering what had become of the merry young man she had courted.

"What should we do?" Mary asked, folding one of Gabe's little shirts and putting it into the basket by her ankle. "If we start digging the sweet potatoes now they won't be large enough: it's just a waste not to let them sit another three or four weeks. The turnips are almost ready, but…" She shrugged her slim shoulders helplessly.

"Turnips ain't no good; they needs bread, an' they needs more meat. Little slice of ham with supper won't keep a body moving like they got to. Feed corn be ready any day now, an' they ain't goin' have a minute's rest." Bethel shook her head. "We can do without flour, if it don't pain you to keep on eatin' like black folks, but we gots to have more cornmeal."

"How much more?" asked Mary. "To get us through until the tobacco is sold, I mean."

Bethel squinted into the sun, figuring rapidly. "Maybe a bushel, if we ain't too generous with it," she said at last. "The hominy holdin' out at least, an' when we gots yams again we won' need so much pone."

Mary was so sick of hominy that she was just about ready to do without grains entirely, but she did not say this. She knew she ought to be grateful that they had it, but she had not grown up with this particular mainstay of the Southern diet and eating it at every meal was beginning to wear on her. She was craving high white rolls and apples in pastry and potatoes mashed, roasted, baked, boiled and stewed. And beef. What she would not have given for a good haunch of beef to roast slow with peppercorns and sage, moist and tender and faintly pink towards the center! But beef was as unattainable as silk, and almost as unnecessary. She had eggs in abundance, served in twenty different ways, and she had a little taste of ham on Sundays. She wasn't working fourteen hours a day in the blazing Mississippi sun: she did not need more meat than that.

"I'll speak to Cullen about it," she said, conscious that she had stood too long in silence while she dreamed of the foods of her childhood. "He could do with a morning off the planation, and he could fetch the mail as well."

Bethel grunted her approval as she handed Mary two corners of a bedsheet. Together they folded it, moving with a matched rhythm learned in this summer of close association and the unity of hard work.

_*discidium*_

On the morning when Cullen came back from Meridian with a bushel sack of cornmeal in the buggy, and two letters from Jeremiah Tate in his pocket, Elijah was mowing the grass before the house with a long-handled scythe. This had not been much of a priority over the last several weeks, but Bethel had finally put her foot down and declared it had to be done before they grew a jungle out there. From the direction of the woodshed came the ring of an axe: Nate splitting firewood. Likely Meg was harvesting blackberries in the creek bottom: they were prolific this year and Bethel intended to dry or preserve every last one. As Cullen drew up the drive Elijah leaned the scythe against the fence and fetched something from the lowest step of the veranda. Cullen had intended to drive right through to the stable, but he reined in Pike and Bonnie and leaned down as the old man approached.

"What you got there?" he asked.

Wordlessly Elijah handed it to him: an ear of corn still wrapped in its thick green husk. The silk was disturbed and one long leaf had been peeled back a little. The kernels within, until lately plump and sweet and bursting with moisture, were now over-fat, tough, and hard. Cullen pushed aside the husk another inch or so, checking to be sure the same was true further down the cob. Exhaling heavily he let his elbow fall against his knee and his hand flop back as he returned the corn to his slave.

"It's ready," he said dully.

"Yassir," said Elijah. "Pretty near half the ears on the plants I checked be ready. We bes' start on it soon."

Cullen nodded but did not speak. Despite the relief of knowing the feed corn had made it through to harvest, he was not looking forward to the next few weeks. Mornings in the corn, reaching up and snapping off heavy ears to fill large willow baskets, and afternoons in the tobacco, stooping and scraping for the suckers that still persisted in trying to sap the vigor of his crop and spoil the ever-broadening leaves. His back and shoulders, now a perpetual mass of painfully knotted sinews, protested the mere thought of it.

Bonnie was stamping restlessly at the hard-packed dirt of the drive, and Cullen snugged up the reins a little. "I got to get these two out of the heat and rubbed down," he said. "You finish up here and spread the word we'll start in the corn at daybreak tomorrow. I'll see you in the top field in an hour."

Elijah offered quiet assent and went back to fetch up the scythe again. Cullen loosed his hold on the lines and let the Morgans find their own way into the barn. When they were brushed and watered he swung the heavy sack of meal over his shoulder and trudged back to the house.

Mary and Bethel were in the kitchen, chopping parsley and dicing carrots for dinner. They were intent upon their work and did not see him enter. Despite the flies that always wandered into the house at this time of year the back door was always left wide open in case of a chance breeze to cool the kitchen. Bethel had barley and celery and onions boiling on the back of the stove for a soup, and the humidity in the room was terrible. Cullen wasn't sure how the women could stand it, with their work dresses buttoned straight to the collar and their cuffs turned back only to the middle of the forearm. He noticed Mary was wearing her small traveling hoop under her dress, and was briefly surprised by the workday affectation until he realized that he could see the ridges clear through the skirt: she wasn't wearing any petticoats. That told him just how overheated she was, for Mary almost never put comfort above modesty.

He set down the sack with a heavy _thump_, and both women turned. Mary wicked a stray strand of hair off of her forehead with the back of her wrist and smiled for him, but there were faint lines of worry between her brows, and she looked very tired. Bethel, always the stalwart bastion of the family, simply nodded her chin approvingly at the bushel of cornmeal.

"You get a good price?" she asked.

"Best I could," Cullen said. It was the worst time of year to be buying such stores: right before the new harvest when the previous year's supply was running low and demand was highest. Nobody had spoken the truth: that they never should have run out of cornmeal, or salt, or any of the other staples he was supposed to buy for the year. In the tension and frustration that had followed his poor sale in New Orleans, he had somehow erred in his calculation of the necessary supplies. He still did not know what his mistake had been, and that haunted him. But Bethel and Mary were kind, and more forgiving than he probably deserved: neither had uttered a single word of blame.

"Any interesting news from town?" Mary asked. She was watching his eyes very carefully and Cullen wondered just how much she could see.

"Not much," he said. "Everyone's talking about the presidential election. Strange thing is they don't seem to care about any of the rest of it. I had to ask three people before I found one who even knew who was running against Brannan for sheriff." He reached into his coat pocket and brought out the letters, holding them up for Mary to see. "Both from your brother," he said. "Postage unpaid."

"Would you put them on the mantel in the parlor?" Mary asked, nodding at her wet hands. "We'll be eating in a little over an hour."

"Can't spare the time," said Cullen. "Soon as I get out of these clothes I'm going down to help Nate with the wood, then it's back in the tobacco. The corn's ready for its first pass: we'll be starting at dawn tomorrow. Ain't going to be much time for anything else 'til it's done."

Mary managed a small, encouraging smile, but now Bethel was watching him pensively. Uncomfortable under their joint scrutiny, Cullen slipped between the skirts and the stove and moved for the dining room door.

"We'll fix somethin' nice for you to take out with you," Bethel promised quietly. Cullen looked back over his shoulder and tried to turn up the corners of his mouth.

_*discidium*_

As the sun climbed on to midmorning, the activity in and around the cornfield took on the smooth and practiced motion of a dance. Meg, Bethel and the three men were picking, working their way down the rows and feeling each ear for its readiness. When they found one firm enough to be taken, they snapped it from its stalk and deposited it into the basket they dragged down the rows. The two Negro men picked into one basket; the two women into another. Cullen, without a partner at his back, had his own. As the baskets grew full they would be hoisted and carried from the field to the stretch of clover meadow beside it. Here the grass was cropped close from regular mowing for feed, and Mary and Lottie were waiting. The corn was poured out in a heap and the pickers went back to their rows, and the white lady and the dark girl set about spreading the corn on the clean earth to dry in the sun. They gathered an apronful at a time, kneeling in the grass and laying the ears out neatly so they would be easy to turn in a day or two.

It was a calculated risk, drying corn in the sun. The moisture would bake out more quickly than if they spread it in the hayloft, and they could lay out more at one time, but if it looked like rain everyone would have to drop whatever they were doing and hurry out to gather the ears. A soaking downpour would make the corn molder, and it would be unfit even for the hogs. But the skies had been clear for days and Elijah assured them that he wasn't expecting rain. The others seemed to accept his word as infallible – all but Cullen, who was sure to spend just as much time worrying now about the chance of rain as he had spent in July fretting over the want of it.

From where she worked Mary could keep a sharp eye on Gabe. They had brought an old quilt and a mended sheet to the field, along with two kitchen chairs, and out of these they had fashioned a little half-tent so that the child could play in the shade while everyone else was occupied. It had taken the combined and repeated reminders of Mary, Lottie and Bethel to make him stay under the shelter of the sheet, but now he had finally given up trying to sneak past their vigilant eyes. He sat like a little sheik on the edge of the quilt, almost but not quite at the border of the shadow. His wooden horses lay abandoned where the sheet puddled on the ground, entirely forgotten in his entrancement at the scene before him. He kept looking from the pickers where their heads and arms just showed amid the tall corn, to his mother and his playmate in the meadow. Now and then he would call out to someone by name, earning a wave and an effortful but cheery reply.

Between these salutations he was playing with his kitten. The litter in the barn was old enough at last to be weaned from their mother, and Cullen had taken Gabe up to have his pick. He had chosen a speckled white-and-ginger cat with a crooked ear. Bethel, who firmly believed that the plantation's feline population belonged in the outbuildings, had given the poor little thing a rigorous bath with strong, homemade soap and a thorough going-over for fleas before she had allowed it into the house. But Gabe's extraordinary pride in his new pet had mollified her, and after three days she was just about used to the notion of a housecat.

Gabe had named the kitten Stewpot, though why he should think this particular moniker a suitable choice was a mystery to Mary. Cullen had laughed when he had been told, and that alone made the ridiculous name worthwhile. Mary missed her husband's laughter far more than anything else she had had to do without through this hard year. These last weeks it had been almost impossible even to raise a smile from him.

"Mama!" Gabe shouted. He clambered to his feet and Stewpot rolled hastily out of the way so as to avoid being trodden on. The tassel that Mary had fashioned out of the remains of a ball of yarn dangled from the boy's fingers, and as the kitten recovered from his fright he began to caper underneath it, trying to catch the tempting cords with his tiny claws. "Mama, I wants to help!"

It was at least the sixth time he had made this announcement, and each time it had been more difficult to persuade him to stay where he was. Mary opened her mouth to try again, and then she hesitated. He was so sweet and earnest in his desire to participate, and although surely such a small child did not feel guilt at sitting idle while others worked he certainly felt left out. Suddenly she could not bring herself to tell him that he was too little to be of any use. Her eyes drifted down towards the corn, where Cullen was reaching with stiff but steady arms to break off another ear. He woke up every day and went out to work at tasks for which he had not been raised, and at which no doubt people had told him he was of no use. And although he worked less skillfully than Nate he worked just as hard and just as long, and he did not let anything stop him. She wanted her boy to grow up to be as brave and determined as his pappy, and she could start by teaching him that he could help simply by doing his best.

"All right, dearest!" she called. "Come here and I'll show you what to do, but put on your hat first."

Gabe's face broke into a radiant grin. "Yass'm!" he said eagerly. He dropped the woolen tassel and Stewpot sprang upon it, tousling contentedly at the edge of the quilt. Gabe squatted down to reach the very back of his makeshift tent, and picked up his small straw hat. At the beginning of the season it had been a scaled replica of his father's, but now Cullen's was mashed and misshapen from constant tugging and frequent wettings, discolored with sweat and ragged at the edges, while Gabe's was still almost pristine. He grabbed the crown with one plump hand and clapped it down on his head in an uncanny imitation of his father, and then came trotting down past the rows of neatly laid ears to Mary's side.

"I goin' pick de corn?" he asked eagerly. He pointed at the field. "Like Pappy an' Nate?"

"I don't think you can reach it, do you?" Mary asked. "Go and try."

He ran down the gentle slope at full tilt to the end of the row his father was working. He reached as high as he could, stretching his back and rising up on his bare toes, but of course his fingers only came two-thirds up the stalk and fell far short of the ears. He tugged on one of the drooping leaves experimentally and frowned. He peered around the plant. Cullen, working far down the row, paused and took off his hat, shading his eyes and squinting against the sunlight at his son.

"Pappy!" Gabe shouted. "I's too short!"

"No, you ain't!" Cullen called back. "The corn's just too tall." He looked questioningly at Mary and she smiled brightly for him.

Gabe came running back to his mother. "Pappy say de corn too tall," he relayed gravely. "Maybe I help you, den?"

"What a wonderful idea!" Mary applauded. She reached into her laden apron and picked up another fresh-smelling green ear. "You see? I take the corn and I lay it down, nice and straight so it doesn't touch any of the other ears. Would you like to try?"

"Yes!" Gabe said stoutly. He tried to grab one of the cobs, but his hand was too small to reach even halfway around it and his fingers slipped on the slick wet leaves. He frowned and then dove in with both hands, seizing it successfully and picking it up. He held it for a moment or two, studying it with tremendous interest. Then he laid it down next to the last one with the care of a little girl putting her wax doll to bed. His face lit up with pride. "I did it!" he said.

"You did," said Mary. "You did it beautifully. Now do it again: there's a great deal of corn to lay out, and they're picking faster than we can spread it."

Gabe fell eagerly to work. He was neither quick nor efficient, but he did not slow Mary down and he was extravagantly happy. He was the only one who was. The sun was climbing higher and the day was growing hotter. As good as this was for the drying of the corn, it made for hard going. The pickers got little enough benefit from the shade of the stalks, for their heads and shoulders and arms were still bare to the sun. The constant reaching seemed to wear on them: now and then someone would pause to stretch a neck or roll a shoulder or rub at an aching elbow. Mary and Lottie were perspiring under their sunbonnets, and although they worked steadily Mary's wrists were sore and Lottie knelt more heavily each time she returned with an apronful of corn. Elijah tried to get everyone to sing, but only Bethel raised her voice determinedly in the responses.

Finally, when the sun was at its height, Bethel left the field to lay on a hasty dinner while the others worked on. The heap of corn at the edge of the clover patch was taller than Gabe now, for with five people picking and only two spreading they could not possibly keep pace even with the little boy's well-meaning and meticulous assistance. That was all right, of course: Mary and Lottie could work on through the afternoon while Cullen and the field hands were in the tobacco. Bethel would keep picking and when the heap was gone Mary could join her while Lottie kept laying out the ears they harvested. They would accomplish what they could, and the following morning everyone would be out in the sun again, bringing in the feed that would sustain the stock through the winter. Mary looked out at the sea of corn and wondered if they would ever finish, going at the pace that they were.

_*discidium*_

On Sunday there was no question of going to church. Cullen was too tired and, though he refused to admit it, in far too much pain. As he had expected the disparate efforts in the corn and the tobacco left his back and his arms and his hips and even his knees in throes of twitching torment that only seemed to deepen and clarify during the nights. After lying in a little later than usual it was all he could do to lever himself up off the soft feather tick and dress unassisted. Sitting still and straight for two hours on an unyielding church pew would be torture.

Mary, too, seemed reluctant to leave the plantation. She swore she was not suffering from the repetitive task of laying out the corn, or from the afternoons she spent picking with Bethel so that work did not have to stop, but he didn't know that he believed that. What he did know is that he had married the most courageous woman in New York State; maybe even in the whole country. She worked steadily and uncomplainingly, and between them she and Bethel were still managing to lay on the meals and bring in the garden a little each day. With all that needed doing she had not even had the opportunity to read her brother's letters, and so after breakfast the Bohannons retreated to the parlor and she took them down from the mantel.

Cullen tried to find a less than agonizing position in his chair, and then moved to the récamier under the window. This was even worse, and so finally he stretched out on his stomach upon the faded velvet rug before the empty hearth. He curled his right arm up and rested his cheekbone against it, looking across the small expanse of floor to where Mary's neat buttoned shoes peaked out from under one of her good cotton dresses. She had not put on her church clothes, of course, but she had still taken the trouble to dress prettily and with care, and he felt ashamed of his haphazardly donned second-best trousers and unbuttoned vest. Despite hard work – and field work, at that – Mary was keeping her gentility and her well-bred grace, while he appeared to be going slowly feral.

Mary broke the seal on each letter, looked at the date on the first one, and then laid it aside. As she had done with the last epistle from Maine she did not read it aloud at once, but studied it with a faint frown of concentration upon her face. After scanning a few lines she let her hand fall to her lap and smiled indulgently at him.

"You'll get frightfully dusty down there," she said.

"That's why I didn't put on my Sunday best," Cullen replied, extemporizing. His eyelids felt heavy and he wondered whether he might actually fall asleep here. The nights were getting longer, but not nearly fast enough. He found himself thinking longingly of December, when there were more hours of darkness than a man could possibly sleep through and not enough work to fill the day. December, when for good or ill the tobacco would be harvested and cured and sold and the anxious watching would be over. They were well into September now. In four more weeks, maybe five it would be time to start priming. Five weeks of luck and they would have a top-quality crop to bring in. Try as he might, he just could not trust Providence to send him a whole month of luck.

Gabe came into the room, the absurdly named but very patient Stewpot hugged to his chest with one arm. The kitten's forepaws clutched the child's sleeve, and his hindquarters dangled. He was still only the size of a decent yam, and his head was too big for his clumsy little body. The sidelong sight of his son carrying his treasured new pet brought a tired smile to Cullen's lips.

The boy stepped onto the carpet, wriggling his bare feet luxuriantly in the nap. He crouched down and released his hold on Stewpot, who tumbled to the ground but managed to land on his feet. The kitten disappeared under Mary's chair, hidden by her skirts. Gabe tilted his head far to the left so that he was looking Cullen levelly in the eye.

"What you doin' down dere, Pappy?" he asked. "You goin' get dust in your whiskers."

"I told you," Mary said sagely.

"Just having me a little rest, son," Cullen said. "What you been up to?"

"Bet'l give Stewpot some cream," Gabe said proudly. "He drink it all wid his li'l pink tongue."

He straightened up and came near to Cullen, looking him over thoughtfully. Then he lifted his right foot and planted it on the small of his father's back. Before either adult quite realized what he meant to do he pushed off with his left and put his whole weight across the base of Cullen's spine. There was a sudden pressure followed almost immediately by a deep and almost ecstatic release from the pain in and around the vertebra beneath the small foot. Cullen moaned.

Mary stiffened, dropping the half-read letter and leaning forward with arms outstretched to snatch up her son. "Gabe!" she cried. "You must't do that! You'll hurt Pappy!"

Gabe fell hastily back, removing his modest weight and sending the muscles back into their seething knots. "No, no, no, no!" cried Cullen. "No! Do it again, son; get back up there." He cast wide eyes up at Mary. "It feels good," he panted. "So derned good. C'mon, son: get back up there."

Warily Gabe obeyed, planting one foot and shifting his body to raise the other. It settled next to the first, a little higher on Cullen's spine, and brought the same merciful reprieve. "Now turn 'round so you can walk up my back," he said. "One foot right against the other, heal to toe."

The child hesitated for a moment, and then walked his toes in a counter-clockwise direction and shuffled so that his left foot was on top of Cullen's spine. He lifted his right, and for a moment the pressure was too much. Then he planted it, spreading the range of relief towards the broad bands of muscles over the kidneys where the torment of stooping was worst. Again Cullen's instinct was to groan in abject gratitude, but remembering Mary's earlier reaction he restrained himself to a slow, hot outpouring of breath. "Again," he said.

This time Gabe moved with more confidence, holding out his arms like a tightrope walker. When he placed his left foot Cullen could not help a little grunt, and Gabe giggled. "Good boy," sighed Cullen. "Go on."

As Gabe reached his ribs the weight against his lungs made deep breathing difficult. Cullen simply took shallow breaths instead: the glorious easing of the strained sinews in his back far outweighed any discomfort in his chest.

When Gabe's toes were cupped around the knob at the base of Cullen's neck he stopped, but did not jump off. He was laughing now, and he said; "May I do it 'gain, Pappy?"

"_Yes_," groaned Cullen, his eyes closed as he savored the respite from the grinding pain between his shoulder blades. The rest of his back was tightening again, seizing into knots and snarls off weary muscle.

"Here, try this," Mary said as Gabe carefully turned around. She knelt by Cullen's shoulder and took hold of Gabe's ankle to move his foot. She had a calculating, problem-solving look in her eyes now. "Put your feet so that Pappy's spine is right between them, then shuffle down like you're kicking hay. Shuffle, shuffle… that's it."

This was still more delicious, and Cullen almost wanted to weep at the blessed surcease of torture. Gabe chuckled. "What's a spine, Mama?" he asked.

"A backbone," said Mama. "All those little knobs are the bones that hold together Pappy's back."

Lately Cullen had become convinced that anguish and necessity were the only things holding together his back, but as Gabe turned again at the base of his spine and the vertebrae crackled he revised that theory. There were still bones in there after all: they just needed someone to knead out their misery a little.

"Pappy, I walkin' on your bones," Gabe announced as he scuttled up Cullen's spine again. He moved quickly now, growing agile as he learned the new movement. He turned and hurried down again. The release of tension was spreading like heat from his small feet, stretching out around Cullen's ribs and into his abdomen and even out towards his stiff shoulders. He snuffled quietly against the carpet, not trusting himself to speak coherently in this rapture of sudden liberation from the worst of his physical misery. There was still pain, of course: he would not be free from pain for months yet. But it was no longer so pernicious, and the feel of his son's nimble toes and round little heels was as soothing to his spirit as it was to his spine.

Mary folded her skirts under her and sat beside him, one hand playing idly in his hair while their child walked up and down his back and laughed merrily. Cullen lay there perfectly contented and half-drunk with the euphoria of relief, his burdens forgotten at least for a little while.

_*discidium*_

It was not until Gabe was down for his nap that Mary had the opportunity to pick up her letters again. Cullen was now settled in his customary armchair, legs stretched out before him while he savored one of his handmade little cigars. He had it clamped between his first two fingers and when he inhaled the fragrant smoke his eyes would flutter closed in quiet relish. Mary watched him from the corner of her eye, glancing up between each line. He looked less careworn than he had that morning: the drawn look was gone from the corners of his eyes and he sat a little straighter. It was remarkable and also a little absurd that something so simple and silly as a child treading up and down his back should bring about such a change. Gabe was nothing less than a pint-sized miracle worker.

As she read, however, Mary forgot about watching her husband. Her pulse quickened as she took in her brother's words, and she hurriedly flung aside the first letter so that she could read the second. The brevity she had taken for no more than a postscript now raised a lump of dread in her throat, even as her heart hammered a little with secret joy. Hands trembling she lowered the paper. She looked at Cullen, watching the sunlight on the toe of his boot as if lost in a deep daydream. Mary wet her lips with her tongue; an unladylike gesture, it was true, but necessary if she was going to make herself speak.

"Cullen?" she said tremulously.

"Hmm?" He let his head loll towards the other shoulder and turned up the corners of his mouth drowsily.

"It's…" This was ridiculous, Mary told herself. She had nothing to fear from her husband, however much he might dislike the news. She screwed up her courage and tried unsuccessfully to smile. "Jeremiah's letter."

"Children all safe and happy and doing well at school?" Cullen recited.

"He and Frances are coming to visit." The words were out almost before her mind could shape them, tumbling over one another with the speed of a diving hawk that pinned its prey before there could be any room for second thoughts.

Cullen sat bolt upright in the chair, so quickly and forcefully that he winced against the protest of tired muscles. He shuffled to the edge of the seat, propelling himself with his elbows. The fingers gripping the cigar pinced tightly enough to crimp it. "What'd you say?"

"Jeremiah and Frances," Mary repeated, her heart fluttering anxiously. "They're… they've… Jeremiah writes that if I cannot come to Bangor he and Frances shall come here. He wants to see me. To meet his nephew. He thinks…"

"He thinks Washington will force our hand and Mississippi will leave the Union," said Cullen brusquely. "If the fools in Congress are just as boneheaded as he is about sticking their noses where they ain't wanted, he's not far from right." He sighed and eased back in his chair, grimacing a little as he did so. "You'll just have to write back and tell him it ain't convenient. We can't feed another two mouths, not even for a fortnight."

Mary felt ill. The expense of the journey was enormous; the distance daunting and the philosophical differences between Bangor and Meridian staggering. For these reasons and others she had never truly believed that Jeremiah would accept her invitation. She had only made it because she did not want him to think she was reluctant to see him. As much as she would have loved to spend time again with the boy who had taught her how to roll a hoop and slide down the upstairs bannisters when Nanny wasn't looking, she did not want to watch the strong-willed man, now a staunch and very vocal abolitionist, squaring off with her equally stubborn and no less principled husband. She had made the offer because she wanted Jeremiah to know that she loved him, not because she had actually wanted him down here. And now it was too late.

"I can't," she whispered. "The tickets are bought: they'll be arriving on the first of October, the three o'clock from Memphis. They're going by way of Philadelphia to visit Frances's sister first. They… they'll be departing from Bangor before a letter could possibly reach them. And… and it's three, not two: Missy is coming with them…"

He stared at her, expression unreadable and steely eyes wide. His jaw worked tensely for a moment and he pressed his lips into a thin line. His shoulders slumped further into the chair. "That settles it then," he said dispassionately. "Best go tell Bethel at once. The Lord only knows what she'll say about it, us having houseguests at a time like this."

Mary got to her feet and faltered, one hand still clutching the rumbled second letter with the itinerary. "Cullen, I'm sorry…" she began.

He shook his head, but he now looked grey with weariness and the worry-lines were back at the corners of his mouth and across his brow. "Don't be sorry," he said gently. "They're your people: you got a right to see your family. We'll just have to manage it somehow, that's all."

At once Mary was reminded why she loved him so. No matter what happened, no matter the calamity or misfortune or unforeseen circumstance, he faced it. He might falter a moment in the initial shock, but then he wheeled around like a general marshalling the army of his intelligence, his wit, his determination and his courage, and he did what he had to do to cope with what had been laid in his path. Even now, when it had been her blunder that had laid it, he offered no words of blame. He simply squared himself off and started looking for a solution to the problem.

Suddenly he grinned, a manic and almost gleeful grin. "I wonder if that brother of yours knows how to make hay," he said. Mary laughed a little, thinly, and Cullen chuckled. But they both knew he was only half joking.


	23. The Bottom Leaves

**Chapter Twenty-Three: The Bottom Leaves**

The day came at last, and sooner than Cullen had expected. They had spent the morning in the corn, where they were nearing the end of the second pass through, and after a hurried dinner were just preparing to head out into the tobacco when Elijah appeared from around the woodshed carrying two handfuls long, slender pikes, each with one end sharpened to a fine point. At the sight of them Cullen's heart rose to his throat and began to hammer furiously.

"It's time?" he asked hoarsely. "It's early."

Elijah nodded and handed one bundle of staves to Meg. Nate was already dragging the cotton sack off of his shoulder and starting back to the toolshed for the knives. "I checked them first rows we put in this morning. They got bottom leaves starting to pale: be yellow soon if we don' get 'em in. It time."

"It's good quality stuff, ain't it?" Cullen asked. It was scarcely more than a whisper; even now he hardly dared to hope.

"For bottom-leaf tobacco it look good," Elijah agreed. "We got to wait and see how the rest of it goes when its turn come."

Cullen closed his eyes and offered up a brief prayer of thanks. They had done it: fighting off suckers and aphids, worrying through dry weeks and toiling miserably through wet ones, sweltering in the heat and shivering in sodden clothes at sunset. Now, at last, he first leaves were ready for picking.

Nate was back with the slender knives with their curved blades honed like shaving razors and their smooth bone handles stained with the tar of years past. He gave one to Cullen, who tucked it into the loop on the front of his heavy oilskin overalls. The two younger men picked up their buckets: one in each hand. Meg and Elijah, each carrying a pole, only took one. They left the other two by the well: Lottie would find them when she came out to bring them fresh water and a bite to eat later in the afternoon. Day after day they had trodden this path, dragging tired bones and flagging spirits out to the broad, spreading fields of brilliant green. Today, despite their aches, they hurried. No one said a word as they passed the top field in which they had been suckering and descended to the corner where the infested plants had been torn out in July. It seemed a lifetime ago now, Cullen thought, though he could still see the scorch-marks in the pasture beyond where he had been forced to burn the fruits of his labor.

Cullen and Elijah took the first row; Nate and Meg the second. Elijah and Meg each brought one staff with them and stood three steps down the row from their partners. The two younger men took out their knives and stooped at the first plants, setting to work with something almost like eagerness. Carefully Cullen cut a slit in the stem at the very base of a leaf. Then he lopped it from the stalk leaving only a small stump. Tobacco sap sprang like blood from the wound, trickling onto the knife and over his fingertips. It was necessary to cut as close to the stalk as possible, but imperative that he did not actually nick it: it needed its strength and its integrity to continue to nourish the higher leaves. When he had made his slice he drew the leaf gently out from among the others, careful not to move too quickly. It caught against its nearest neighbor and he turned it carefully. It would not do to tear either leaf: the best price was to be had for whole, unblemished tobacco.

When the frond was free he handed it to Elijah, who drove the point of the pike slowly through the slit in the stem. Cullen did not watch, because he was already doing the same to the next leaf, but Elijah drew the leaf down to the notch set eight inches from the end of the pike and let it settle there, the tip of the leaf settling on the dirt. When he was given the next leaf he pushed it down until it sat a little less than an inch from the first. This way, when the rods were hung in the barn with the stems to the ceiling and the leaves hanging down they would not touch. Tobacco did not cure properly if the air could not circulate around it.

The leaves that were ready were the lugs, the very lowest ones on the plant and the dirtiest. Mud clumped on the underside and here and there the leaves were pitted where they had been nibbled by passing ants. First-pass tobacco only fetched two or three cents a pound, and on many larger plantations the leaves were only taken for use by the slaves. But Cullen needed every penny he could get from his fields, and that meant cutting and curing and packing the lugs with the same care he would afford to the far more valuable center leaves and the middling-quality tops. He took the third and last of the ripe leaves from the plant he was working, and moved on to the next one.

The leaves were between sixteen and twenty inches long, and about half as broad. The veins were indeed starting to pale: a sure sign that it was ready. It was Cullen's third year helping with the picking, and he was now fairly adept at judging a leaf's ripeness, but he worked with Elijah instead of Meg so that the old man could mutter, "Not that one…" when he erred. In the next row Nate was already a plant ahead, working with a speed and efficiency that Cullen could never hope to match. Determinedly he kept his eyes on his own work, still a little stunned that the long-awaited harvest had begun at last.

Soon the euphoria wore off. Picking was every bit as physically demanding as suckering. Worse, in fact, because they were working only the very bottom of the plants and had to bend almost in two to reach them. The sun was still fierce and the air still hot and heavy even though September was on the wane, and the sweat poured down Cullen's brow and stung in his eyes. The bases of the leaves were wet, where the dew gathered along the veins, and soon his sleeves were soaked. And because he was cutting full-grown stems instead of infant suckers his hands were coated almost immediately in a sticky, nebulous layer of tar that soon spread all over his body.

There were only two or three leaves ready on each plant, but by the time they finished the fifty acres more would be ripe and they would have to start over again. Leaves taken too soon fetched a poor price; leaves left too long still poorer. There was a window of about a week of optimal readiness, which was just enough time to make a full pass of the fields, but the business of working half-days was over. They would be out here from first light to last continuously until the stalks were stripped and the curing barn full. Mary and Bethel would have to finish picking the corn on their own: there was no help for that. Cullen felt a flutter of unease that he tried to believe was not guilt. His Mary, bringing in the corn like a Negro, like an immigrant, like a poor farmer's wife. He did not care about his own position: he had a strong, healthy body and he could use it to do what was needed. But he wished there were some way to keep Mary out of the fields.

At least he could see to it that she kept clear of the tobacco, he thought as he picked up his pace. He could have had her holding his pike, and Elijah picking with Lottie to stack for him. That would have meant three pairs, with Bethel to mind the house and the boy and to keep them all fed. The work would move faster, but it was not worth it. Cullen knew that he could never again respect or even tolerate himself, if he let his brave and beautiful wife stoop to such miserable labor. Anyway as soon as they had a few poles laid up in the barn Lottie would be needed to tend the curing fires during the day. And as soon as the corn was out of the field and drying Bethel would want to clean the house from top to bottom in anticipation of the New England visitors.

That was something that rankled, and it was just another worry to gnaw at him while he worked. He would have preferred to think about the dozen personal reasons he did not want to entertain his brother-in-law and his simpering wife, but Cullen found himself returning again and again to the practical ones. There was the shortage of stores: they did not have enough meat or cornmeal to last the eight of them until the tobacco was sold in late November, and in any case Bethel would not think of serving cornmeal to guests. There would be no alternative but to buy a barrel of flour, likely for two or three dollars more than it would cost him in New Orleans in two months' time, and he would have to do something about meat. If only it were as simple as butchering a hog, but they were too large now to be eaten fresh without spoiling, and the weather was too hot for the meat to firm up enough to be salted. He might smoke it, but who would mind the fire? Lottie could only do so much, and if it came to a choice between the tobacco fires and the smokehouse fire there simply was no choice.

It made his head ache just thinking about it, and he had no solution to offer. Nor had he pointed out to Mary that he could not possibly be spared from his work to help her entertain the guests. He knew she was expecting him to be out early and working through the day, but he wondered whether she understood that he would not be able to halt in time for a civilized supper. There was no question of taking the Tates visiting to the neighboring plantations, either, unless Mary and Frances wanted to call on Verbena. Considerations of time aside, courtesy forbade Cullen from bringing such a very vocal proponent of abolition into the homes of those he might offend – or who might equally offend him. He wondered whether Jeremiah Tate understood just how quiet and rural Lauderdale County was. There were no theatres, no public balls, no gentlemen's clubs. There was, quite simply, not much to do unless one moved in the circles of the county set and had leisure to squander on their endless hunts and suppers and barbecues and dances.

"Too soon," said Elijah, staying Cullen's hand with his voice before the master could cut a leaf that was not quite ready. He grimaced and tried to focus more intently on his work. They were near the end of the row now, but Nate and Meg had already started on their second. It took less time to prime a plant than it did to look for suckers, at least at this stage when so few leaves were ready. Cullen adjusted his hold on the knife, sticky fingers resisting, and tried to wipe his eyes with his wet and tarry sleeve. As he cut another lug his eyes drifted up the plant to the luscious leaves at the middle of the stalk, still not quite mature but broad and whole and filled with promise of a good price. If only the Lord spared them any late-season misfortune or any unforeseen delay they would have a bountiful and saleable crop.

He closed his heart against that hope, remembering the enthusiasm he had felt last year, just before the week of blistering heat that had shriveled the stalks half-ripened after a dry year that had slowed their growth to begin with. Worse than the disappointment had been the hundreds of weary hours, day after miserable, stooping day, cutting leaves too immature to cure but too dry to let stand; knowing all the while that the work would bring little return. Tending the kiln fires day and night, and watching as the tobacco turned color not to the deep and even brown so prized by buyers, but to a sickly greenish caramel color that proclaimed even to the untrained eye that the crop was a failure. Lying awake, exhausted beyond reason but unable to sleep because his mind was flooded with visions of fruitless negotiations in the warehouses overlooking the levees by the sea. The nightmare of that pitiful harvest haunted him, and he was too much of a realist to believe that he was past the crisis point. Until the best leaves were ripe and picked and cured and packed, he would not be able to draw an unburdened breath. Too much depended on this crop: the survival of the plantation, the health of his wife and his child, the wellbeing of his darkies, and perhaps the best part of his spirit. He felt that way sometimes: if this crop failed it would take something with it, something that the mud had been trying to leach from him all year.

He was at the end of the row at last and he straightened his back. The joints of his ribs creaked as he did so, and he thought longingly of Gabe's little feet paddling up and down his spine. He wondered if he might be in less pain each day if he could indulge in such treatment on a regular basis, but of course that was impossible. He did not have time to lie about during the hours his son was awake, and that was all there was to it. When the crop was in…

"You wan' switch?" asked Elijah as Cullen stopped at the next row. He snorted disdainfully at the older man and bent to the first plant.

He _did_ want to switch. He had often thought it might go easier on the pickers if they took a turn piercing in every other row. But Nate would never switch with Meg, and if he did not then Cullen couldn't either. It was not just a matter of keeping what little respect his slave still had for him; his own pride would not stand for it. If Nate could pick all day, so could Cullen. He had managed it last year, though by the end he had been nearly crippled with the pains. The year before he had stood and held the pike, but things had been different then. Then, he had still sometimes had days, or even a week where he did no field work. Then there had still been money enough to pay the taxes, buy the year's stores, and keep everyone decently clothed and shod. And Elijah had been younger then.

He would no more admit it than Cullen would confess to his own tormented exhaustion, but Elijah was past his prime. He was older than Bethel: probably a good eight or ten years older, though it was difficult to make an accurate guess and neither Elijah nor anyone else knew the precise year or date of his birth. Sometime in May; that was all he knew. He'd been born when the magnolias had been blooming, in the year that the master had bought the team of Devon oxen. This was meaningless to Cullen, of course. Elijah had been sold off of that plantation as a child and did not even remember its name; only that it was somewhere in South Carolina and he supposed his mother and father were buried there.

His exact age did not matter anyhow. What mattered was that over the last year or so he had been finding it harder and harder to keep up his old pace. He had not been able to do any of the spring plowing, and he struggled with many of the heavier jobs about the place. In better times he would have been allowed to go into an honorable retirement of sorts, perhaps still tending the stock and splitting kindling and doing other light work, but spared the rigors of mowing and threshing and freed at last from the fetters of the tobacco. But there was no one to replace him, and he was needed in whatever capacity he could still manage. Cullen, conscious of his failure as the master to provide another field hand to replace the aged one, tried his best to keep Elijah from the worst of the work. With so few of them and so much to be done this was only possible to a limited degree, but at least he could drive his own mules, haul his own logs, and pick his own damned tobacco.

"These leaves lookin' good," Nate said from the next row. He was speaking to Meg as he moved to a new plant. "Massa goin' get top price."

"Praise the Lord," Meg said reverently. "Even these here lugs ain't bad."

Cullen bit his tongue against the urge to scold them for their optimism. A little hope was no bad thing. He could do with a taste of it himself. The knife slipped and nicked his thumb. Cursing under his breath he brought it to his mouth and sucked off the blood. He tasted the bitter green tang of the plant, so unlike the rich dark taste of cured tobacco, and the sickly-sweet foulness of the insidious sap. He pulled back his thumb and watched as the bright red globe of blood rose afresh on the blackened, grimy skin. Sighing he picked up the knife where it had fallen in the lingering mud at the base of the plant. Let it bleed, then. What was he going to do, stain his oilskins? He got back to work, teeth set in loathing. Mud and blood and futility: the mortar of a farmer's life.

_*discidium*_

There were only about three acres of corn left to harvest. All working together the household had made good time, and the weather that was now unseasonably hot had ripened the remaining ears so well and so swiftly that only two passes through the field had been needed. When the morning chores were done, Mama and Bethel would tie on their sunbonnets, collect the makings of Gabe's little tent, and head out to the meadow. They moved in opposite directions, Mama working northward while Bethel worked south and then reversing, because in this way someone was always less than half a row away from Gabe. He was old enough now to understand that something tremendously important was going on and that he must mind his mother and Bethel and stay where they could see him. He played with his kitten in the shade, or ran up and down the little hillock whooping like a wild thing, or trundled down between the rows of towering corn to follow one or the other of the women, chattering happily. Whenever he wanted to he could fetch a drink from the bucket of water sheltered under one of the chairs, and when Mama or Bethel came to the meadow end of a row he would fill it carefully and carry it to them.

The first time he had done this had been for Mama, because she looked so tired and hot dragging the heavy basket after her. She had looked at him in surprise when he held up the tin ladle dripping with sweet, cool water, and then she had laughed and hugged him and told him he was a darling boy, and so clever! Gabe liked to be clever, for Pappy was clever, and so he kept on doing it.

Pappy was back in the tobacco all day, which meant that Gabe never got to see him at all. At least when he had been working in the corn Gabe could watch him, even if he had to be good and not pester. And they'd had dinner together every day, Pappy eating quickly but at the very same table as Gabe, and at the same time, too. Now he took his dinner with him when he went out before the sun was up, and he ate it with Nate and Meg and Elijah right in the tobacco field so that the work did not need to stop any longer than absolutely necessary. Mama said it was a good thing that the tobacco was ready for picking, but Gabe disagreed. He was starting to resent the tobacco for taking his Pappy away from him.

That was his secret, however. The grown folks wouldn't understand it, because all they ever thought about was the stupid tobacco. Mama and Bethel talked about it when they worked in the kitchen. Lottie wondered aloud about it while she ran back and forth from the heap of corn to the drying rows of ears laid out in the grass. On Sunday Pappy kept muttering about it as he sat at the big desk in the parlor scribbling on the back of an old piece of paper. And although Gabe didn't see much of Nate or Elijah or Meg, he just knew _they_ were thinking about the tobacco, too. Soon Lottie wouldn't be able to play with him anymore, because she'd be busy keeping the fires in the tobacco barn burning all day when the men and her mama were in the fields. The nuisance that had been a constant presence in the consciousness of the family all year was now in command: everything revolved around the tobacco.

Gabe had only the dimmest understanding that the crop was, somehow, very important. Sometimes he woke up late at night when the stairs creaked, and he could hear Mama and Pappy murmuring in low voices as they passed his room on the way to bed. More than once he had heard Mama say, very kindly and gently; "As soon as the tobacco is in you will; just a little longer." Then Pappy would sigh and Gabe would hear the rasp of his whiskers on his strong, calloused palm, and he would know that the tobacco was making Pappy worried and tired. He hated the tobacco.

Only Stewpot knew the truth, though. Gabe whispered it to him in the shade of the bedsheet tent when Mama and Bethel were in the middle of the field and Lottie was up in the meadow laying out the corn. And Stewpot would look at him with his bright green eyes, and he would mew softly to show that he understood, and that he would not tell anyone, ever. Gabe was glad. He thought maybe it would hurt Mama and Pappy to know what he really thought of their stupid old tobacco.

Gabe was bored with lying on his belly on the old quilt. He had been playing with the woolen tassel, making it bounce and dance so that Stewpot would try to grab it with his paws, but now the kitten had retreated to the far edge of the blanket where the sheet puddled upon it. The sheet was warm from the sun, and Stewpot liked to snuggle up against it while he napped. Gabe was meant to be trying to nap, too, but he wasn't in the least bit sleepy. He folded his arms before him and rested his chin upon them. He wanted to do something fun, something interesting. He wanted an adventure.

Lottie was at the far end of the meadow, laying out corn from her apron. Gabe sat up and crept to peer around the edge of the chair nearest the cornfield. Mama and Bethel were down in the middle of their rows, working towards one another. They weren't watching to make sure he was sleeping as he should be. Encouraged, Gabe got to his feet. The cornfield spread out all the way to the bottom of the garden in front of him, and off towards the pasture to the left. To the right it seemed to go on and on like a forest. Gabe grinned. There might be _anything_ in that corn: dragons or soldiers or Indians. It was just the place to have an adventure.

He looked towards Lottie again, but she was intent on her work. She thought he was sleeping, too. He shook his head at this foolishness. How was he supposed to sleep out here in the bright sun where there wasn't even a bed? He took his naps in his darkened bedroom up in the house, not on a blanket in the meadow. That he had napped quite successfully under such circumstances for the last several days did not occur to him.

Quick as his short legs would carry him Gabe bolted from his shelter, running down the gentle slope to the edge of the corn. He hurriedly ducked into an empty row, scurrying along until he couldn't see Lottie anymore. He couldn't see much of anything, he realized eagerly, except the towering green stalks with their lazy leaves. Far down the other end of the row he could just make out the whitewashed rails of the garden fence, and in the direction from which he had come there was a thin slice of meadow, but that was all. Even the big, empty sky was crowded into a thin, ragged ribbon by the empty heads of the picked plants. All around him there was nothing but corn.

Gabe was delighted. This was the _perfect_ place for his adventure. He imagined the stalks were great big towering trees, and he was a soldier scouting after Redcoats. Mama had told him stories about the Redcoats, and how they had wanted to tell the People what to do and how to live. And the People didn't like that, so they fought a great war for Independence. Mama's great-grandfathers had fought the Redcoats in far-off exotic places with names like Saratoga and Philly-delfie, and Pappy's grandpappy's pappy had fought at a place called Sullivan's Island. The People had fought, and fought, in fields and forests and cities and forts, and in the end they had beaten the Redcoats and chased them away, back to England and Canada and the Gulf of Mexico. And that was why there were no more kings and all the People were free.

There were Redcoats in this forest, and Gabe knew it. He wriggled his way through two cornstalks, the big bottom leaves dragging on his arms and tickling his face. He burst out into the next row, ready to do battle. He spun to the left, but there was only the long tunnel of corn that ended at the garden fence. He spun to the right, and he saw Lottie up on the hill, climbing to her feet with her empty apron bunched in one hand. Only it wasn't Lottie, of course: it was a Redcoat sentry, looking for Gabe. Lottie's pink sprigged dress was _almost_ red, wasn't it? Yes, she was definitely a sentry.

Gabe dove into the next row of plants, fighting his way through. This was no good at all: he was behind enemy lines, and he didn't have a weapon. He wished he had remembered to bring his popgun from the house. If he had expected to be fighting Redcoats in the corn he certainly would have. But as he broke out into the next earthy asile he spied something almost as good. It was a bent willow-stick that had broken off of one of the baskets. He picked it up and tested its heft in his hand. It would do. It could be a sabre, or even a musket! Eagerly, now prepared for anything, he wriggled through the next row.

The hunt went on, but the Redcoats were sneaky. They were always just past the next line of corn, but when Gabe got there they had advanced again. It was terribly exciting, never knowing when he might find one, and Gabe began to move in elaborate looping patterns to try to catch them unawares. Once he burst out with a wild whooping yell… but the Redcoat he had been sure he would find when he did was long gone. He began to feel frustrated. The game was no good without someone else to play the enemy. As it was it was just him, tearing through the corn with a bit of broken basket in his fist.

He was sick of the game, and what's more he was starting to feel hot and thirsty. He meandered up the row he had halted in, absentmindedly whacking the stalks on either side with his stick as he walked. He came to the end of the row and stepped out of the shade into the bright sun, and froze in horror.

His tent was gone. The clover was gone. The buckets and the dipper, the heap of picked corn, and the rows laid neatly to dry in the sun were gone. There was only a wide field, dark earth turned but growing thick with weeds – some of them as high as Gabe's waist. Gabe looked all around, but he could not see Lottie anywhere. He ran out into the barren field, the hard clods of dirt hurting his bare feet, and turned around so he could look at the corn. He could not see the dark shapes of Mama and Bethel moving down the rows, picking diligently. He could not see anything at all except the dead field around him and the bare hill to his left and the empty cornfield like an ocean of tall green trees before him.

Frightened, he ran back down into the corn. The stalks flew by on either side as he hurried down the row. On the other side he would come out near the garden: he knew that. And the garden from the garden he could find his way to the dooryard, and the house was just there, not so far from the henhouse. If he could find the garden he could get home.

But he came out in empty grass, short enough to tickle his ankles but endless and unfamiliar. He looked to his left, where he thought he should be able to see the garden fence, but there was nothing. There was a dark shape up on the rise to his right: huge and four-legged. Squinting, Gabe thought maybe it was a cow… but it might just as easily have been a bear or a dragon or something else that liked to eat small boys who wandered off away from their mothers. Stricken with terror, he hurried back into the corn and crawled under the fronds of one of the plants, huddling against the stalk.

Gabe wanted to cry. He didn't understand how he had managed to lose everything familiar when walking through the cornfield that he knew belonged to his pappy. Where was the house? The stable? The woodshed and the well and the willows and the cabins? All the familiar landmarks of his world were gone, and his Mama was nowhere to be found, and he was lost in an endless cornfield with empty land all around him, and he was hot and he was thirsty and he was frightened.

He crouched there a long time, hugging his knees to his chest and whimpering softly in the back of his throat. He stubbornly refused to cry. Pappy wouldn't cry, even if he was lost and alone and far away from home. Pappy was a brave, brave man, and Gabe wanted to be brave just like him. He tried to think what Pappy would do in this sort of awful predicament. Would he hide under a cornstalk, waiting for that bear or dragon or monster or whatever-it-was to find him and eat him? No. Pappy would get up and pick up his musket and try to find his way back in the direction he had come. That's just what Pappy would do. Somewhere in this vast jungle of corn Mama and Bethel were working, and Gabe was going to find them.

He got up and retrieved the willow-wand where he had dropped it. Then he looked at the corn. The two rows between which he stood looked identical, but he was sure the one on his off side was the one that he wanted. At least he thought it was the off side. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the day when Pappy had taught him how to get down off of Pike's back, and he could feel his father's fingers tapping on his knee. Yes, that was the off side, all right. He turned in that direction and dove through the close-growing plants.

Gabe pressed on and on for what seemed like hours, or even days. He got thirstier and thirstier, and his legs began to ache. His face and hands were sticky with green stains from the corn leaves, and his fingers ached from the tight, ferocious hold he had on his stick. But row after row passed and he did not see any sign of Mama or Bethel. A new and awful fear filled him. Suppose the whatever-it-was had found them first, and eaten _them_? It was possible, he thought. Mama was a lady, and in the stories ladies were always getting carried off by monsters. And Bethel was tough and she was bossy, but she wasn't a tall, brave man and she didn't have a gun. She wouldn't be able to fight a monster.

Tears prickled in Gabe's eyes at this terrible possibility. Frantically he pushed through the next row of corn, and the next, and the next.

Then suddenly he was out under the open sky, blinking dazedly in sunshine that seemed very bright indeed after the shadows of the tall plants. Indiangrass tickled his knees, and behind him there was a huge wall of corn stretching far in either direction. But in front of him a little ways was a field of strange-looking bushes. They were taller than Gabe, but only just, and they had a strange squat look as if some huge creature had bitten off all of their tops and left just the bottom leaves. And the leaves themselves were simply _'normous_, big enough to wear as a cape. Curious enough to forget his fear just for a moment, Gabe approached the edge of the field, where a lip of sod gave way to the dark, plowed soil. He stepped down with care and approached one of the strange plants. He tugged at it, and a shower of dew fell from the back of the leaf, sprinkling his toes and the thin layer of mud that surrounded the base of the stalk. The plant had a strong, mealy scent to it, green and sour and vital, and when Gabe let go of the leaf his fingertips were smeared with something sticky and dark. He wiped them on his little pants and looked around again, puzzled.

He retreated back to the edge of the field, looking around to see if there was anyone tending these peculiar plants. He saw no one, but his eyes caught sight of something much more enticing. Away down at the far end of the field, past the countless rows of broad, stunted plants, was an oak tree, and in the shade beneath it there were wooden buckets. Gabe broke into a run, dropping his stick in his single-minded pursuit. Those were the sort of buckets they used at home for carrying well water to the house, to the stable, and out to the fields. As he drew nearer he saw that two of the buckets had dippers leaning up against their sides, and his pace quickened. He ran so swiftly that he could not stop properly when he reached his destination, and he tripped and skidded on the grass, staining his calves and the knees of his pants with green. He scrambled up again and hurried to the nearest bucket, snatching up the dipper as he landed heavily on his knees.

The pail was half-full of water, and Gabe brought up a brimming ladleful. He slurped it noisily, water running down his chin and the front of his shirt and wetting his lap. He drained the dipper and filled it again, drinking his fill. The water wasn't as cool as it might have been fresh from a well, but it was wet and it was delicious. He drank again, and then reached to splash his hands in the water. He cupped his palms and brought up small handfuls to pat on his cheeks to cool them. Then he sat back on one foot and looked around. There were six buckets, three of them empty and two only half-full. One of these was the one he had been drinking from, and the other had a red rag tied around its handle. And one of the empty ones was lying on its side in a patch of slick wet grass, as if it had been dropped hastily or kicked over in a sudden panic. Gabe hardly looked at it: he had seen something more interesting. Nearby on the ground there lay several long, skinny poles with sharpened tips. Gabe studied them for a moment from afar, and then his heart began to hammer high in his throat.

Spears, he thought. _Indians_!

Gabe had heard about Indians, too, though not from his mama. All the land in Lauderdale County had once been Indian territory, before the government had taken it over and driven them off. Indians were wild and dangerous, and they sometimes fought wars against white people and burned their homes and scalped them. Gabe didn't know what _scalped_ meant, but he had heard Nate and Elijah talk about it in the eager, scandalized tones that grown-ups used when they talked about far-off horrors they never expected to experience themselves. Grown-ups didn't understand that all the bad things you could imagine were real: that you could wander off in your pappy's corn and find that suddenly your whole world had disappeared; that a monster or a dragon or a whatever-it-was could eat your mama and your Bethel and leave you all alone, that you could stumble out of the forest of corn stalks and find strange and smelly plants that some kind of giant beast had been grazing on. Bad things did happen, and Indians were real, and they had been here: they had left their spears behind, and this was probably their water, too!

That realization was the final horror. Gabe had taken the Indians' water! They would find out that he had stolen from them and they would catch him and hurt him. They would burn down his house and take Pappy's horses and they would maybe even scalp Gabe, and Lottie, and Meg and Elijah and Nate. They wouldn't scalp Pappy: bad things could never happen to Pappy. He would fight them, but what could he do against so many Indians? There were lots and lots of spears lying there in the grass: many, many more than Gabe could count.

Panicked and now on the very verge of tears, Gabe bolted to his feet. He looked around frantically for somewhere to hide, his fingers dripping with the stolen water, and he could see nowhere at all. The cornfield was so far away: he would never reach it in time! There was a stone with a hollow under it, but there was something stuffed in there, wrapped in a napkin, and anyway it was too small for even a little boy to crawl into. There was nowhere to hide, except among the low green plants with their huge leaves.

Gabe ran, stumbling as he stepped down from the edge of the sod. His fingers scrabbled in the damp dirt, streaking his palms with mud, and he bolted down to the middle of the row. The plants grew out of small shaped hills, like the potatoes and the yams did, and he got down on his hands and knees and crawled under the spreading lower leaves to press himself close against one. The mud soaked through the seat of his trousers and wet his drawers, but he did not care. He drew in his legs so that his feet were close to his bottom and lay down in the dirt, curled on his side and trembling. The plant under which he was sheltering was sticky and smelled even stronger than the one he had examined earlier. Looking up Gabe could see little knobbly wounds where leaves had been cut off: one, two, three, four of them. They were dripping pale sap that ran in tiny rivulets into the dust. Gabe watched the juice oozing from the cuts, and tried very hard to fight off his terror, but it was no use. He shrank closer to the stalk, deeper under the shelter of the leaves, and silent tears began to course down his round little cheeks. He was lost and he was frightened: his mama was gone and his pappy was far away and the Indians were coming.

Exhausted from his exertions and worn down with the elaborate torments of a young imagination, he fell asleep.


	24. The Wanderer

**Chapter Twenty-Four: The Wanderer**

Cullen took the sharpened end of the loaded rod, and Elijah lifted the butt. It leveled between them, the leaves settling down to dangle from it. Each man rested his end upon his shoulder, and Elijah led the way to the end of the row, and then over to the foot of the rise where the other filled poles were lying in the grass. They lowered the new one carefully, so that the leaves would not fold or tear. The effort of bending slowly and smoothly sent familiar daggers into Cullen's kidneys, and he straightened as quickly as he dared when the stave was out of his hands, regretting the motion as the rest of his back protested. He took off his hat and dug out his filthy handkerchief, blotting the perspiration from his brow. Elijah scratched the back of his neck, waiting for some sign of what his master wished to do next.

"Best get some water," Cullen muttered, turning away and trudging over to the oak tree. He squatted stiffly and drew up a full dipper. The water was tepid, but he was too thirsty to care. Elijah helped himself from the other bucket, and Cullen picked up the wash-pail to drizzle a little over his hair. Dirty rivulets ran down his cheeks and the back of his neck, but it cooled him. He dragged the wet tendrils out of his eyes with his left hand, and the hairs stuck to the thick coating of tobacco juice. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and tried to dust his palm on the seat of his oilskins.

"Damned stuff gets into everything," he muttered.

Elijah only looked at him, filmed eyes unreadable.

Cullen tossed his head and settled his hat again. He bent back the brim to keep it from drooping too badly. It was a good thing straw hats were worthless, because he had pretty near destroyed his. He wondered whether Mary might consent to make him a new one. Then he put that thought from his mind. She'd have enough to do once the corn was in; Bethel would want to start right in on the fall cleaning a month early so the house would be ready for guests. Looking out towards the field he called out; "How you two getting on over there?"

Meg turned, keeping a firm hold on her pole, and waved her free hand. "Jus' fine, Mist' Cullen!" she promised, then reached hurriedly as Nate handed her another broad leaf.

Three minutes wasn't much of a rest, but it was all he was going to get. Cullen stood up with a muffled grunt and shuffled over to the clutch of empty staves in the grass. He hooked one with the toe of his boot, kicking it up so that he could catch hold of it. "Let's get back to it," he said to Elijah.

Then his eye was drawn to the top of the rise beyond which lay the house. Lottie was cresting it at a full run. "Mist' Cullen?" she called as she flew down the hill, pigtails flying and bare feet narrowly missing one of the loaded rods. "Mist' Cullen, be Mist' Gabe down here with you?"

Cullen handed off the pole hurriedly to Elijah. As he started off his boot struck the end of one of the buckets, and it tipped, spreading its contents over the grass. He scarcely noticed as he went striding to meet the girl, his brow furrowing in an uncomprehending frown. "What you mean, is Gabe with me?" he asked.

She stopped short before him, panting and looking up at him with stricken eyes. "He ain't come down to be with you?" she asked.

"No. Why would he? He never comes out this far." In his puzzlement he still did not quite understand what she was saying. "What you looking for him for? It's his naptime, ain't it?"

"Oh, Mist' Cullen, he gone!" she cried, wringing her hands in the heavy fustian work apron. "He meant to be nappin' under them chairs out the sun, but when Missus Bohannon look up, he gone! He musta up an' wandered. They's lookin' for him in the corn, the missus an' Bethel, but I 'spects he could be 'most anywhere by now."

Cullen might have reassured her that there was only so far a child could roam in a short time, but her obvious distress was infectious and he felt his pulse quicken. "Did you check the house?" he asked. "What about the barn? The cowshed?"

"I's goin' to," said Lottie; "but Missus Mary, she say you all got to come quick an' help look. She say they's a lot of ways a li'l boy like that could get hurt on a farm. An' she right, Mist' Cullen. Hurt or even…" Tears glittered on her eyelashes. "I didn' mean to take my eyes off him, Massa, only he lyin' there, s'posed to be sleepin', an' the corn got to be spread…"

Elijah had come up behind Cullen now, and he was listening intently. Cullen glanced at him, and then turned to beckon with an urgent arm to the others. "Get over here!" he shouted. "Gabe's wandered off and we got to find him before he gets into mischief."

Nate straightened, frowning, and Meg hurriedly tilted the pole towards him. He grabbed it and they carried it, only a little more than a quarter full, to lie on the grass with the others. Meg came hurrying over, gathering up her muddy skirts. "Mist' Gabe wandered off?" she repeated. She seized her daughter's shoulder. "Where he wander to? You's s'posed to keep you' eye on that baby: he too li'l to be runnin' 'bout the plantation all by his lonesome!"

"Leave her be," Cullen said absentmindedly. He was running through the list of places a small child might want to go, and with it the litany of ways he might be hurt or maimed – or even, as Lottie was reluctant to say but obviously thinking, killed. "Meg, you run right now and check the toolshed. Then the henhouse and the cowshed and the cabins. Elijah, the barn and the paddock. Don't forget the hayloft: he been up there after them kittens all month. Lottie, you run check the house and the root cellar. Then be sure the smokehouse is locked." He closed his eyes, thinking frantically, but nothing else rose immediately to mind. "Nate, you and I going to take the corn. We'll start this side of the fields and work in towards Mary."

Nate shook his head, and for a moment Cullen wanted nothing more than to slap him. Impudence while felling trees and a half-cocked rebellion on a Sunday were one thing, but if he refused to put in his oar now when Cullen's son was missing…

But Nate said grimly; "I goin' check the creek bottom. An' somebody ought to look in the well."

The courage drained from Cullen's heart as the color drained from his face. Dear God, the well! Gabe had developed a fascination for it early in the year, and more than once Bethel had caught him climbing up on a crate to look over the low stone wall. Everyone had assumed she had cured his curiosity with her scoldings, but what if she had not? Cullen's body jerked towards the rise, ready to bolt, but he hesitated just long enough to snap; "Get on then, and look! Anybody finds him, first thing you do is get him safe, then bring him right down to the corn to see Mary. She must be sick with worry."

Then he tore off up the rise towards the house.

He did not look to see if the others were scattering as they ought. He only knew that he had to get to that well, and right this minute. If Gabe _had _fallen in he might be trying to hold onto the bucket, or even to float. Cullen had been attempting to teach him to float down in the creek that spring, but the lessons had to be abandoned when the tobacco got large enough for topping. Now he cursed his shortsightedness in neglecting that important lesson in survival. He skidded down the hillside towards the dooryard and vaulted over the fence one-handed – a feat he would not have thought his tired body capable of. He reached the well at such a speed that he had to grab hold of the windlass to keep from pitching into it himself. He bent so that his forehead almost touched the knot of rope, staring down into the stony darkness. He saw a glimmer of sunlight on the water below, rippling placidly, but nothing else.

"Gabe?" he shouted, his voice echoing back hollowly at him. He waited for ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. There was no splash of water to indicate a struggle. No sudden, bobbing mass breaking the surface. A living child might sink, fighting for air, but a dead body would float. Wouldn't it? Anxiously he looked at the ground around the well. He saw the marks of the field crew's boots, deep in the earth that had been wet with the dew that morning. He saw Bethel's shoeprints, and the rounded scratchings of Lottie's bare toes. But no small, three-year-old boy prints. At last he was able to breathe. Gabe was not in the well.

But the creek… The child knew that he was not allowed to go down that way without someone to watch him, but as Cullen had scarcely been a model of boyhood obedience himself he had little faith in the strength of such edicts. He ran off in that direction next, passing Meg as she came out of the toolshed. He hesitated, casting her a questioning eye. She shook her head and hurried towards the henhouse. That was something. The shed was filled with forks and scythes, saws and mallets and long, wicked butchering knives; it was a mercy that there was no sign of the boy in there.

When Cullen came to the place where the pasture met the wood he started to call out again, shouting his son's name over and over as he stepped down amid the trees. He hurried to the water and without regard for his boots rushed down into the shallows. He splashed downstream a few dozen yards, shouting all the way, and then moved upstream again. He heard Nate before he saw him, calling; "Mist' Gabe? Mist' Gabe, where you at? You' mama be worried 'bout you. Mist' Gabe?"

They met not far from the place where the bluff rose too high for ready access to the stream, Cullen now soaked to the knees and Nate somewhat more dignified as he stood with one foot up on a hanging root. "No sight of him, Mist' Cullen," the black man said, genuine relief in his eyes.

Cullen nodded weakly. "Let's go help check the corn," he said. "Mary must be frantic."

She was. The moment she saw him, moving as quickly as he could despite the stitch in his side from his mad dash in the creek, she came flying out of the corn. Her sunbonnet hung by its ribbons down her back and her hair was coming loose from its pins. It looked as though she had been clawing at it. Her face was white and her eyes wide, and she hurled herself into his arms with no regard for her clean clothes against his filthy overalls. Awkwardly he caught her, staying one wildly gesticulating hand.

"He can't have gone far!" she cried. "He was there just a minute ago… I only took my eyes off of him for a _minute_, Cullen, I swear it!"

"Was closer to ten 'tween when las' I see'd him an' when we noticed he gone," Bethel said, coming to the end of the row. "Quick li'l legs can get awful far in ten minutes."

"But where would he go?" cried Mary. "And why? Gabe!" She whirled out of Cullen's grasp and ran back towards the corn. "_Gabe!_"

She stopped suddenly, halfway down the gentle slope, and swayed. Cullen was at her side in an instant, bracing her shoulders. The color was gone even from her lips now, and her eyes had an alarmingly glassy cast to them. "You best sit down," he said softly in her ear. "Running 'round without your bonnet in this heat, you'll make yourself sick. Nate 'n me will look. We'll find him. I got the others checking the house and the outbuildings. He ain't down in the woods."

He took care to say nothing of the creek or the well. That thought had very nearly stopped his own heart; it would be too much for Mary.

"We have to find him," Mary whispered hoarsely. Frantic eyes searched the field. "He might be hurt, or frightened."

"We'll find him," Cullen promised. "You got to sit down. Bethel, come sit her down."

The black woman strode up and put her arm around Mary's shoulder, stroking her hair as Mary leaned in towards the comfort of her hold. "Hush there, honey: he 'round here somewhere. You come sit a minute 'til you ain't so white, an' then you can help look again."

"Best give her some water, too," Cullen said. "Nate, you check down that end first." He gestured broadly at the rows that had yet to be picked clean. "Call his name, but gentle. He might be scared to come out. It's easy to get lost in a cornfield if you ain't but three feet high."

Bethel had Mary on the quilt now, under the shade of the worn old sheet. Mary's face was a ghastly shade of grey and she was breathing heavily as if she were about to be ill. Knowing she was in capable hands, Cullen turned his back. The best thing he could do to comfort Mary was to find their boy. Nate was walking down the row that the women had been working, calling out to Gabe as cheerfully as he could. Cullen plunged recklessly among the stripped stalks, not caring that he was crashing through them and knocking them down, crushing stalks beneath his boots as he went. They were used up anyway: ready to be mowed down as hands could be spared for the labor. Then they would be left to dry and ultimately burned, the ash mulching the soil for the winter wheat.

"Gabe?" he called as he shoved through row upon row. "Gabe, you out here, son? Just give a shout if you are. Gabe?"

The sound of Nate's voice grew distant, and Cullen picked up his pace. In each long aisle he hesitated only long enough to look left and right, sharp eyes watching for bare toes peeking out from under a stalk. Of course with the leaves as verdant as they were a child could easily conceal himself completely, but it might take days to check every plant. He just had to hope that Gabe was neither too frightened nor too hurt to call out in response to his name.

"Gabe? It's Pappy. Where you gone? Gabe? _Gabe_!"

At the end of one row he caught sight of the distant form of one of the cows on her picket-line, grazing contentedly and clearly oblivious to the agitation among the plantation's human residents. He ran down to the edge of the corn, looking out in case Gabe had wandered off to try to visit with the animals. He had less interest in the cows than in the other livestock, with the possible exception of the mules, but it was possible. But there was no sign of Gabe, and Cullen hurried back into the corn.

He continued, walking and shouting. His hips, already sore from priming, began to ache mercilessly with the effort of shoving through the corn, and his throat stung. His hat was taken from his head by a particularly ornery stalk, but he did not stop to retrieve it. Again and again he called, but no answer came. At last he reached the far end of the field, a good half-mile or more from where he had started, and he came out at the farthest corner of the tobacco patch: the last to be planted, and the last in each pass of the fields. Beyond it were the fallow acres resting from last year's disastrous crop. Next year it would be laid in corn, and the cornfield in tobacco, and the fifty sorry acres now green with the cash crop would rest.

"Gabe?" Cullen called again, pointlessly. He had been working just down the field from this spot up until Lottie had come running: he would have seen his boy if he had come out of the corn. Weary and perspiring and hoarse, he stumped along the border between the indiangrass and the muck, thinking only of the water under the oak tree. He called his son's name one more time, halfheartedly.

He felt sick, and his stomach churned as he drank. Where else could the boy be hiding? He might have started off across the pasture, but surely Lottie would have seen him as he crossed her path. In any case he could not possibly have got far enough over the relatively level northern acres to be out of sight of the women by the time his absence was noticed. It wasn't even likely he could have reached the trees. He had to have gone into the corn… but then what? Had he fainted from the heat, or twisted his foot in a gopher hole and passed out from the pain? If he had lost consciousness, he must have done it where he could have fallen concealed by the corn plants. But that couldn't be so, thought Cullen belligerently. If Gabe was in the corn and couldn't answer them, they would have to search each plant by hand. Even with everyone looking they couldn't possibly finish by dark. It wasn't yet very cold at night: just cool enough to take the heat out of the bedrooms. But how much of a chill could a three-year-old boy stand, left out in the dark and the dew? Gabe couldn't be unconscious in the corn.

He might have gone through the rows to the garden, and so to the dooryard. But then surely someone would have found him by now, and if they had they would have come to find him as soon as they obeyed his orders to bring the child to his mama. What if he had got as far as the front lane? He might be out on the road now, unable to find his way home. Or maybe…

Cullen's thoughts returned once more to the well, and the strength went out of his knees. He sank down in the grass, soaked by the spilled pail, and bowed his head over his lap. Maybe a corpse didn't float, not right away. He might be wrong about that. If Gabe was at the bottom of the well…

He looked at the dipper in his hand, frowning. He had had to swing it around to the right side of the bucket to drink: it had been tilted to the left. He could have sworn that when he had put it down the last time, after laying out the pole, he had left it canted to the right. Nobody else had touched this bucket since: they had all gone off at once to search for Gabe. Cullen looked at the pail, puzzled, and then again at the dipper. No, he was _certain_ that he had left it on the other side.

He put it into the bucket as he knew he had done before, and watched it. It swung a little towards the handle tab as the bowl floated, but only a little. It did not swing clear around to the far side of the bucket. He flicked it with his finger, trying to induce such a motion. It rocked, but did not shift position.

Gabe had not quite mastered the art of using a dipper. Instead of lifting it to his lips by the handle alone, he grabbed the shaft with his left hand and cupped his right around the bowl as if holding a mug. He used both small hands to lift it to his lips, and the handle was always on the left so that his dominant arm carried the weight of the laden bowl. Cullen reached out and moved the dipper to the other side of the bucket. Yes, that was how his son would have put it in, all right.

"Gabe?" he bellowed, rocking back onto his heels and climbing to his feet. "Gabe? You out here somewhere? _Gabe?_"

There was a sudden rustling in the tobacco, and a small, frightened yelp. Cullen's eyes searched swiftly for the plant that had moved. It stirred again as the child sheltering beneath it shifted. It was in the sixth row.

"Son?" he called, more gently this time. He hurried down into the dirt and dropped to his knees just short of the plant. In the shadow of the broad leaves Gabe was almost invisible, particularly with the sun shining in Cullen's unshaded eyes. Despite this he could just make out wide, anxious eyes and the shape of small shoulders in a shirt that had once been white.

"Come on out, son," Cullen coaxed. "What you doing hiding under there?"

The arms that had been clutching drawn-up knees fell to the child's sides, pushing to lift him up off the hill of soil. Then suddenly Cullen was struck square in the chest by the hurtling body of his boy as Gabe flung himself full-force into his pappy's arms. He clutched at the bib of the oilskin overalls, babbling in senseless panic.

"Trees 'n trees 'n a _monster_!" he wailed. "Eated Bet'l all up, an' de Injuns goin' get me, an' dey goin' scalp 'Ottie, an' I dropt my mug-sket, an' de big flat plants…"

"Slow down there, son, just slow down," Cullen said. Unsure what else to do he wrapped his arms around the quaking little body and held him close, cupping one filthy hand around the crown of Gabe's head. "You're all right. Just slow down and take a breath."

"De Injuns!" sobbed Gabe, hiding his face against Cullen's armpit. "Dey's goin' git me: I didn' mean to steal dat water. I was jus' dirsty, Pappy! An' Mama… oh, oh, _OH!_"

And he began to sob, huge, sundering sobs that felt strong enough to tear his little body in two. Unable to bear such a terrible sound from his own child, Cullen scooped Gabe up against his shoulder and hugged him tightly, rocking back and forth against his heels. Gabe's bare feet kicked at his thighs, and the plump hands closed in a death-grip on fistfuls of his coarse, sweat-soaked shirt.

"Here now, stop that," he said feebly. "Hush; you're all right. Be a little man, son. Hush now."

Gabe did not hush, but after a while he seemed to run out of energy. The sobs died down and he began to snuffle miserably against Cullen's shirt, now and then twitching with the force of a hiccough. When he was able to speak again he whimpered; "De Injuns, Pappy. Injuns."

"Son, there ain't no Indians. Not within two hundred miles. What's put that idea in your head?" Cullen asked, his hand beating out a slow soothing rhythm between the child's shoulder blades.

Gabe mumbled something unintelligible about water, and then said something Cullen caught, but didn't understand.

"Appears?" he said. "What do you mean, they appears?" He looked around almost as if he actually expected to see Indians skulking in the tobacco, but of course there were none to be found.

"No, no," moaned Gabe. "Dey gots _'pears_. Dere in de grass. Lots 'n lots of 'em."

"I don't rightly know what you mean, son," said Cullen dazedly. "Come on and tell me now: who's got you so scared?"

Gabe looked up at him, flooded eyes wide with the desperate need to make himself understood. "_Injuns_, Pappy!" he cried. "Dey gots 'pears, an' dey goin' stick me wid 'em!" This declaration was too much for him and he dissolved again into abject weeping.

"Spears!" Cullen exclaimed, his momentary excitement at the sudden comprehension overruling his wish to be calm and comforting. Gabe flinched at the volume of his voice and fell to trembling afresh. "There are _spears_ in the grass."

"Ye—eh—_es_!" howled Gabe, trying again to burrow against his father as if he could actually climb inside his ribcage.

Now Cullen understood, at least the bit about the Indians. "Oh, son, they ain't spears," he said. "And they don't belong to any Indians. They're tobacco poles, and they're mine."

"Yours?" Gabe swallowed another terrified sob and craned his neck to look up again. "Dey's yours?"

"Yes," Cullen promised. He shifted one arm under Gabe's bottom and struggled to his feet, a little unsteady on weary legs and hampered by the shifting weight he was carrying. He settled Gabe comfortably against him, keeping up his steady tattoo on the child's back. "Here, look."

He walked to the end of the row and down to where the staves were lying in the grass. He kicked one up as he had before, catching it and planting its butt next to his boot. Gabe's eyes travelled the length of the rod to where it came to a point above Cullen's head.

"You see, we put the leaves on the sharp end and push 'em down the pole," Cullen explained, letting his body sway so that Gabe rocked with him. "When our day's work's done, we take the poles down to the tobacco barn and put 'em up on the rails so the leaves can dry."

"Dey ain't 'pears?" asked Gabe, still tearful.

"No they ain't," promised Cullen. He tossed the pole down and went over to where the laden ones lay waiting. "Look: here they are with the leaves on."

Gabe looked, curious and obviously comforted. With their strange garland the sticks looked much less daunting. He snuggled closer to his father. "But den what was munchin' on dem plants?" he asked.

"Munching…" Cullen looked at the field, and realized for the first time that the tobacco plants _did _look a lot like the shorn stalks of the bluehearts after Pike and Bonnie had cropped off the blossoms, only about forty times larger. It was extraordinary, sometimes, how Gabe saw the world. "Nothing's been munching them," he said. "They grow like that 'cause we're out there every day pinching off the tops. It makes the leaves grow bigger."

"Dey's 'normous," Gabe agreed. He shivered in Cullen's arms and whispered; "Pappy, did dat whatever-it-was really eat Bet'l an' Mama?"

He said it with the stoic air of one who can bear a terrible truth if only he has someone to share it with. Cullen wondered what kind of horrors had been seizing his boy's mind since he had wandered off from his little tent. Immediately upon this thought came the wave of guilt: here he was quieting the child's fantasies while over in the cornfield Mary was doubtless wracked with her own horrors. At once he began striding off up the rise.

"Nobody ate Bethel," he said. "Don't you think she'd make mighty tough eating?"

Gabe giggled a little, wetly. Then he snorted loudly as he inhaled and shook his head. "Dem plants," he said. "Dey's de tobacco."

"They's the tobacco, all right," said Cullen. They were cresting the hill now, and he stopped long enough to point. "Look: there's the house right there."

Gabe looked, eyes widening this time with wonder. "I didn' get lost," he said.

This was demonstrably untrue: certainly he had had no idea where he was, and neither had anyone else for pretty near an hour. But Cullen said consolingly; "No sir: you were right here on our land the whole time."

He walked in silence down the hill and past the dooryard, following the garden fence towards the corn. Elijah appeared around the corner of the barn, saw Cullen with the child in his arms, and slumped in relief. Cullen nodded his head towards the cornfield, and Elijah began to find his own way on the opposite side of the garden.

"Pappy," Gabe said presently, in a voice so quiet that Cullen almost missed the words even though the boy's head was resting on his shoulder. "I hates de tobacco."

There was no one else within earshot, and Cullen allowed himself the rare luxury of confessing his inner thoughts. "So do I, son," he said wearily. "So do I."

He cut through the corn, raising ripples on either side. The very tops of the plants were about level with his head, and so Mary and Bethel could not see his cargo until he stepped out onto the stretch of mown clover. They had both been sitting on the blanket, Mary staring down at a crumpled handkerchief while Bethel had a comforting arm around her shoulder. When they saw that Cullen was not alone they both rose at once, Bethel with careful dignity and Mary in a flurry of petticoats.

"Oh, you found him!" she cried, laughing and weeping at once as she ran to embrace her child. Gabe leaned out from Cullen's chest, one arm gripping his pappy's neck while the other reached for his mama. He was briefly stretched between them, Mary hugging his waist with one arm and stroking his hair with the other, and then Cullen got his right hand loose and wrapped that arm around his wife, pulling her close. Mary was showering Gabe with kisses, and drew back only when she ran short of breath. She looked him over, hooking a stray curl behind his ear. "How dirty you are, dearest!" she exclaimed.

He was filthy, all right. The seat of his pants was smeared with mud, and his bare toes were choked with it. His hands were grubby and his face was streaked with dirt and tears and a shiny, sticky substance that was unmistakably tobacco sap. But he was smiling now, and he loosed his hold on his mother so that he could pet her cheek. "Dat ol' monster didn' eat you," he said stoutly.

"Monster?" asked Mary. She turned her eyes on her husband. "Where did you find him?"

"He was burrowing in the tobacco," said Cullen. "Must have found his way there after we all came out to look for him."

There was a rustling of cornstalks as Nate emerged. He took one look at the Bohannons, still snug in their three-pronged embrace, and set off down the row towards the garden, no doubt to find Meg and Lottie to tell them the good news.

"Have everyone come back here," Cullen called. His next command was muffled when Mary kissed him squarely on the lips. She was weeping joyfully and as she broke from his mouth she turned again to kiss Gabe's forehead. Then she stepped back and blotted her eyes with her handkerchief.

"Here, son, hop down," Cullen said, bending painfully to set Gabe's feet on the ground. "Why don't you go and have a drink of water?"

"I tooked water," Gabe confessed, eyes enormous in penitence. "Down by de 'pears: I stoled it."

"You had a drink from the bucket under the tree," Cullen translated. Gabe nodded, his young face positively wracked with guilt. Cullen grinned. "They wasn't spears, remember? They's my tobacco poles. That water was mine, too. You couldn't have stolen it if it's mine: you're my boy and everything on this place belongs to you, just the same as me."

Gabe looked enormously relieved. "I didn' stoled it?"

"You didn't."

Gabe grinned and ran to Bethel. She bent down and scooped him into her arms. "Honey-lamb," she murmured, rocking him from side to side and kissing his cheek. "Don' you never run off like that again. You tryin' to scare ol' Bethel into her grave?"

"He's going to need a bath," Mary said, looking down at her apron. It was smeared with grime, and her sleeves had fared no better. She looked Cullen over. "You could do with one yourself."

"Maybe tonight," Cullen said. He glanced over at his son, who was hugging Bethel tightly. He was obviously not quite recovered from his ordeal. Cullen looked up at the sun, squinting as he gauged its height. They still had a good six hours of sunlight left.

Meg and Lottie came out of the corn, closely followed by Nate. All of the slaves were now looking to their owner for direction; all but Bethel, who was more interested in the little master than the grown one. Cullen exhaled heavily as he considered his orders. "Nate and me are going to keep on picking," he said. "Meg and Elijah, you get in that corn. I want it finished tonight, you hear me? No rest for anybody 'til it's done. Lottie, you keep on laying it out like you been doing, double quick. Bethel, you get Gabe back to the house and fix him a bath: Mary will go with you. No more working the corn for either of you: it's too much on top of tending the house and watching that boy. Right, then; jump to it!"

Meg and Elijah moved immediately towards the half-filled and wholly-forgotten basket, and Lottie hurried to fill her apron. Nate looked skeptically at Cullen. "Who goin' hold them poles?" he asked.

"We'll pick it and _then_ pierce it," Cullen said. "A few minutes in the dirt won't hurt the lugs."

"I don' know…" Nate said hesitantly.

"And _I_ don't care!" snapped Cullen. "That corn got to get done today: it's made enough trouble. Get along with you, now!"

Nate stiffened at his hard tone, and Lottie stared at him. Cullen felt a pang of remorse, but kept his expression hard. He could not very well apologize to a slave for responding sternly when he questioned orders. He stared the black man down, and Nate started off back through the corn. Cullen relaxed only marginally. He was irritable from the strain of the search and his worries for his son's safety, and his anger was magnified by the knowledge that the whole thing was his fault for putting Mary to work in the cornfield in the first place. He had been so anxious to get the feed laid out to dry before the tobacco was ready that he had compromised his own rigid rule. It would not happen again.

"I'll see you tonight," he said, stepping in to kiss her silken cheek. She smiled thinly and nodded. Cullen moved off to follow Nate.

Suddenly there was a blood-curdling shriek and Gabe flailed so violently in Bethel's arms that she had to set him hurriedly on the ground before he did either of them an injury. Gabe came barreling down upon Cullen, flinging his arms around the man's knees and pressing his face against the muddy oilskins.

"Don' go, Pappy, don' go!" he wailed, suddenly overtaken by sobs again. Cullen stood helpless, staring down at the child clinging like a limpet to his legs. His jaw worked, but no sound came out. Not knowing what else to do he patted Gabe's head.

The boy was rambling again, words tripping out more swiftly than his small tongue could manage. Among them Cullen caught _Injun_ and _monster_ and _Redcoat_ and _Mama_, and although he could not quite follow the narrative he knew that Gabe was once again fretting over his imagined terrors. He pried the short arms off of his knees and knelt down so quickly that almost before Gabe realized he had been detached he was recoupling around Cullen's neck. The anxious litany of fears bubbled against the base of Cullen's ear, and Gabe wrapped his legs around his Pappy's waist. Cullen hurriedly shifted an arm to support the child's bottom. One thing was plain: he could not abandon his son in this state, not even to the tender care of Bethel and his mama.

"Nate, get back here!" he shouted, unable to turn around to see if the Negro obeyed him. Soon he heard heavy footfalls behind him. "Elijah?"

"Yassir, Mist' Cullen," the old man said crisply, lumbering up out of the corn.

"You two finish that pole that's been started, then get the loaded ones strung up in the barn," Cullen ordered. "Then get back out here and help finish that damned corn. I got to get this here boy cleaned up and safe in bed. Don't look like he'll let no one else do it."

He raised his right knee and braced himself to rise. Mary bent hurriedly and took hold of his left elbow, providing extra leverage and some much-needed counterbalance as he stood up without disturbing Gabe. He turned around, eyes flashing like steel as he challenged Nate to say anything against this revised edict. Nate's expression was unreadable, but there was a thrust to his jaw vaguely reminiscent of Bethel's nod of approval. "Yassir, Massa," he said. "Bring in what we picked, then finish the corn."

"Good," said Cullen. He stretched his throat so that his chin could rest on the top of Gabe's head. His Adam's apple thrummed against the child's brow as he said; "Come on, Bethel, and see about that bath. Mary?"

With his wife behind him and Bethel respectfully bringing up the rear with Gabe's kitten in the crook of her arm, Cullen carried his son down the row of empty cornstalks towards the house.

_*discidium*_

Bethel stood in the corner of the kitchen, watching as her one little boy bathed the other. Mister Cullen had stripped off those horrible oilskin pants that never protected him as they should, and he was kneeling in drawers and work shirt beside the tin tub. His sleeves were pushed up over his elbows, but they and the front of his shirt were soaked with water, and there were puddles on the floor that soaked his knees. Mister Gabe would not stop splashing, and of course his father's chuckles only encouraged him. Mister Cullen dipped the old sponge and wrung it out over the back of his son's neck, so that a stream of warm water rained down over the boy's bare shoulders. Mister Gabe laughed happily and slammed his palm down on the surface again.

"I'm getting wetter'n you are," Mister Cullen said fondly. He picked up the bar of store soap and lathered his hands, then started to work them through Mister Gabe's hair. They never used homemade soap on the little boy's head, for it stung terribly in the eyes. There were some economies that simply were not worth it, and Bethel knew that Mister Cullen would rather go without boots or clothes or flour or meat himself than cause his son any unnecessary hurt.

Mister Gabe had finally reached the age at which he no longer resisted their efforts to wash his hair, and he tilted his head back as far as it would go. His eyes were screwed tightly shut, but he was smiling, and as the man's fingertips got right down against the scalp he wriggled. "Scratch harder, Pappy. I's itchy," he announced.

"I'll bet you are," agreed Mister Cullen. "You got mud in your hair."

A shadow flitted through his eyes at these words, and Bethel wondered why. But now he was reaching for the pitcher from the washstand, which had been warming close to the stove. He tested the water with one finger, and then pressed his free had to his son's forehead to form a dam as he poured the water over the child's hair. Mister Gabe squealed delightedly and laughed as his father set down the vessel and worked free the last of the soap. Then he picked up a rag and put it in the child's grasp so that Gabe could wipe his eyes before opening them again.

"Now let's see those hands," Mister Cullen said, scooping up a small globule of the homemade soap this time. "Would you look at this," he said, running his smallest finger along a dark streak on the child's palm. "You been touching the cut stalks, ain't you? Now you got hands just like mine."

"Jus' like yours," the boy parroted happily.

"Now, that ain't no good thing," his father warned. "When you go into town folks'll look at you sideways, and everybody gonna know you been out in the tobacco. They won't want to give you credit on account you look poor, and some of 'em might even be ill-bred enough to mention it. And when you go to the neighbors' for a supper and a dance…"

"I danced wid Mama," Mister Gabe declared proudly. "In her pretty clo'es."

"That's so," said Mister Cullen thoughtfully. "Now, Mama don't seem to mind it much. Tobacco hands, I mean. Don't ask me why she don't, but she don't. We're lucky we got Mama, you and me. Ain't many ladies of her quality got time for scoundrels like us."

He had finished with the child's hands, and now had one foot up out of the water as he scrubbed it firmly. He was smiling broadly and to Bethel's eyes he looked like a boy again. Only the faint crinkling at the corners of his eyes hinted that he was no longer young and free from care. He was always at his best when he was with his child. Missus Mary could gentle him, soothing his worries and his restless spirit like a skilled rider with a half-wild horse, but only Mister Gabe could bring back the blithe innocence of childhood. Moments like these were so few these days, and so precious.

"Gimme that other foot!" Mister Cullen laughed, hand flapping uselessly in and out of the water while Mister Gabe slid from side to side in the tub so that his leg eluded his father's rambling grasp. "Give it here, I tell you! Give it to me!"

He bent forward and blew noisily against Mister Gabe's breastbone so that the child shrieked with laughter. His fright and his tribulations were forgotten, and he was reveling in this rare private time with his pappy. Both of them had quite forgotten that Bethel was in the room, and that was how it should be. She was only there in case she was needed, not to intrude upon their magic moment.

"Gimme that foot!" Mister Cullen repeated. The child shook his head so that his wet curls slapped his cheeks and sent a spray of water over his father's face. Mister Cullen wrinkled his nose and squinted exaggeratedly, then lifted a hand to brush the water from his beard. "All right, then: scrub it yourself."

"I needs soap!" said Mister Gabe, holding out an upturned palm. His father gave him a little dollop and he put his ankle up over the opposite knee, brow furrowed in intense concentration as he washed his foot. Mister Cullen cupped his hand and poured a handful of water over the child's back, rubbing circles over the small spine with the rag. Bethel knew it was just an excuse to touch his son, to maintain the loving contact that grounded him in his heart of happiness. She smiled, wondering if there was ever a woman in the world who loved her boy as much as she loved hers.

"All done!" announced the child, sticking his foot high in the air for inspection.

"Just about. You got a little smudge of muck between these last two toes," said Mister Cullen. With his index finger he wicked it away, rinsing his hand. Then he pinched the child's great toe. "_This li'l pig went to the_ _market_," he began. He took the next toe in its turn. "_This li'l pig stayed home." _And so on down the foot._ "This li'l pig had a bit of meat. This li'l pig had none. And _this_ li'l pig cried 'Wee, wee, wee!', all the way home!_"

When he reached the last toe he ran a tickling hand up the child's tummy and under his chin. Mister Gabe let out a merry whoop and tried to writhe away. His bottom slipped on the slick tin of the tub, and the back of his head cracked loudly against the rim. The tub made a sound like a gong, and the little boy's eyes went wide. Instantly contrite, his smile gone, Mister Cullen sat the child up, one had supporting him across the chest while the other flew to his skull.

"You all right?" he said, breathless with consternation.

Mister Gabe's face cracked into a broad grin. "We do it again?" he asked sunnily.

For a moment his father could only stare in shock. Then he laughed, deeply and richly, and rumpled the wet curls with his hand. Gabe kicked, sending up a fountain of water that lapped over the sides and thoroughly soaked the lap of his father's drawers.

"What's all this commotion?" a gentle voice asked from the doorway. Missus Mary stood there with a towel over her arm. She had changed out of the soiled work dress. Bethel thought it was probably ruined. The mud from Mister Gabe's clothes and body would wash out all right, but the sleeves and back were stained with tobacco juice from Mister Cullen's hands and arms, and no amount of scouring would get rid of that. It was only an old cotton work dress, but Missus Mary didn't have so many clothes anymore: not as many as it was fitting for the mistress of the house to have. It was a shame, Bethel thought. Missus Mary had been a fashionable lady in New York, and a dressmaker had made all of her beautiful gowns. She wondered if it was hard for her to put on simple calico frocks and help to pick the corn.

"We're just about clean," said Mister Cullen, grinning up at his wife.

"Well, Gabe certainly is," she said, picking her way carefully across the wet floor; "but it seems to me that you could still use a little scrubbing."

"Scrub me, then," he murmured, and Bethel felt her cheeks grow hot. He really had forgotten she was even in the room. Missus Mary had not, for her color rose and she flashed a small apologetic glance at Bethel.

"I think I'll get this young man into some clean things instead, thank you," she said neatly. "Stand up, dearest, and let Mama dry you off."

The child obeyed, and Missus Mary wrapped him in the blanket and lifted him out of the tub. She sat down on the edge of the kitchen bench so that he could sit in her lap while she rubbed his arms and legs and downy head dry. Mister Cullen got to his feet, shaking off his wet arms and looking sheepishly at the swamped floor. He fetched a rag from the basket under the washbasin and dropped it into the largest puddle. With one bare foot he pushed it around, a little uncertainly.

"Never min' that," Bethel said. "I's goin' scrub the whole kitchen jus' as soon as you has your own bath."

He looked up, surprised. "I ain't having a bath," he said. "I'm going out to finish that corn."

Bethel bristled. "You ain't goin' out there in them wet drawers," she said. "Ain' you learned your lesson yet 'bout workin' wet in the heat? An' if you gots to put on clean un'erwear, you might as well wash firs'. The water already right there."

"It's a waste of daylight," said Mister Cullen. "I don't aim to waste no daylight." He abandoned his inexpert mopping and moved towards her. "The wet clothes won't hurt me none, neither. Keep me cooler, most likely. I'll be in the corn instead of the tobacco anyhow."

"Cullen, really," Mary chided. "You might at least try to compromise. Put on some dry things."

He shook his head. "They'll only get wet with sweat and sticky from the oilskins," he said. "I don't aim to give you girls any more wash to do than you got already." He pressed his lips together for his wife, miming a kiss from across the room, and reached to squeeze Bethel's hand affectionately. "I'll clean up good before bed, I promise. Just as soon as the light's gone."

Then he stepped out onto the stoop and sat down on the bench to pull on his filthy stockings. The oilskin overalls were next, and it was all that Bethel could do not to flinch as he pulled them on. She hated those pants. They were hot and heavy and useless, but Elijah insisted that they were what folks wore to work in the tobacco, and Mister Cullen – insecure in his own lack of knowledge and experience – did just about everything Elijah said. Her suggestion that if he was going out to the corn he might wear his woolen work pants died on her lips. He would only throw back the same argument he had made against changing his drawers. She watched as he yanked on his boots and got to his feet, silently but stiffly, hiding his pain. Then he stumped down the steps and was gone from sight.

She shook her head mournfully. "That boy is the stubbornest person I ever knowed," she muttered to herself.

"He is, isn't he?" Missus Mary said fondly.

Bethel turned. She had forgotten the other woman's presence. Instinctive embarrassment at her lack of discretion welled up, and then faded. Missus Mary understood. They weren't alike at all in most ways, but in this they were all but identical. They both understood the joy and the frustration, usually found in equal measure, of loving Cullen Bohannon.


	25. Collecting the Guests

**Chapter Twenty-Five: Collecting the Guests**

With the feed corn picked, the cleaning of the house began. Bethel superintended the operation, and Mary and Lottie were pressed into service to do her bidding. Even Meg was taken away from the tobacco for a morning to haul the rugs out onto the line so they could be beaten until the dust rose off of them in clouds. Bethel cleaned every corner of the kitchen, organizing the pantry afresh. She blacked the stove and polished the hardware on every door and drawer in the house. She mixed batch after batch of vinegar and water, and wiped down the clapboard walls in the kitchen and the dining room, the corridors and the nursery. With a rag only just moistened with a similar concoction Mary carefully blotted the wallpaper in the parlor and the two large bedrooms. She washed the inside of the windows, and Lottie got up on a stepladder and finally onto the roof to wash the outside. They laundered all the bedding and laid out the best towels to bleach in the sunlight for days. They took down the curtains and washed them and starched them and pressed them with care. Every lamp in the house had to be cleaned and polished, the wicks trimmed neatly and the bowls carefully half-filled with the precious kerosene they had been saving only for the lamps most often used. Lottie spent an entire afternoon rubbing the silver with polishing powder.

They readied the front bedroom, where once Cullen's grandparents had slept. It was now used chiefly for storage, and before it could be made presentable, Nate and Cullen were enlisted to move Mary's patented sewing machine – a wedding gift from her sisters and their husbands – down the stairs. They tucked it in a disused corner of the front hall near the parlor door. They also moved the trunk of winter clothes into the master bedroom, and they dragged the heavy bedstead across the room so that the women could clean beneath and behind it. The following night they hauled it back again, and by lamplight Cullen unlaced the sagging ropes that were meant to hold the mattress and strung them tightly again. Then Lottie climbed up onto the bed and walked across them, bouncing a little at each junction between the squares of hemp so that the ropes laid straight and true and would not squeak when Jeremiah and Frances stirred in bed.

The plump feather ticks were removed from Mary and Cullen's bed, and placed in the room made ready for the guests. The Bohannons would make do with a straw mattress instead. Bethel and Mary made the bed with the best sheets, and from out of the chest in the nursery Mary brought the beautiful green Star of Virginia quilt that she had sewn during the last months before Gabe's birth. It had never been used, and the colors were rich and bright and the stitches as smooth and perfect as they had been when she took it off the frame. When it was aired and ready she spread it over the bed and tucked it neatly, and it brightened the whole room.

She still had pieces of the dark sprigged calico dress she had cut up to make the right points of the stars, and from this she sewed new curtains for the front bedroom, her foot working the treadle of her machine while practiced fingers guided the fabric under the flashing needle. Bethel carefully cut the lace from Mary's second-best petticoat to edge them, and with light muslin liners fluttering behind them the curtains added the perfect touch. The old clothes-press was cleared of its detritus and wiped inside and out with oil so that it glistened, and Mary made a cloved apple to tuck inside for a sweet scent. There was a dressing table already in the room as well, though they had to bring up the mirror from the dining room to hang above it. They moved the best basin and pitcher into the washstand in the dormer, and Bethel laid out bright rag rugs at either side of the bed. A tatted lace cloth on the chest of drawers and a cut-glass vase that could be filled with flowers on the day of the visitors' arrival completed the tableau.

Last of all they tidied the nursery, making sure that Gabe's toys were tucked away and moving all of his clothing into his parents' room. He would sleep with Cullen and Mary while the Tates were staying, and his seven-year-old cousin would have his room. Mary tried to make the room more appealing to a little girl by changing the blue-and-brown rag rug for the red one from Bethel's bedroom, taking down the etching of knights in armor and replacing it with one of her needlepoint samplers, and bringing up _Tanglewood Tales_ from the parlor. From an old chest in the narrow attic under the ridgepole, she brought out her doll with the china face and hands and the dainty velvet ballgown. She was no longer the fashionable little lady that she had been when Mary was a girl, but she looked very sweet sitting on the small nursery table and Gabe, at least, found her fascinating. Hopefully Missy would take to her as well.

With the house positively glistening, Mary and Bethel undertook the difficult task of planning meals for a fortnight with company. Bethel had firm ideas about what was and was not acceptable to serve to guests, particularly out-of-state guests, and Mary's attempts to be the voice of practicality were more often than not rebuffed. There was no question of serving cornbread, and certainly not hominy except at breakfast. They could make corn muffins, two-thirds flour and one-third cornmeal: these were apparently perfectly acceptable. But white bread and biscuits were a necessity, as were pastries and other sweet confections made with good sugar – never sorghum. Mary argued that her brother and his wife had never had sorghum and would not recognize the taste or understand its significance, to which Bethel responded that was all the more reason to use sugar. Only the preserves made with sugar could be served, she insisted, and they would have to make an assortment of pies and cakes to serve with supper. For months the Bohannons' dessert course, when they troubled with it at all, had been limited to stewed fruit and coffee, but even Mary had to admit that was unacceptable for guests.

The variety of vegetable dishes was highly desirable, both to add more courses to the meal and because the garden's harvest represented a Southern bounty beyond the imagination of the average Yankee. Vegetables tasted richer here, and they were more vividly colored and, so people said, more nourishing. However it was impossible to entertain Northern guests without a supply of potatoes, and so Bethel and Lottie dug up two rows. They were small and immature, and it seemed such a waste to take them now when in another month they would be twice the size. But they were smooth and beautifully white inside, and however Mary might regret the spendthrift measure of the early harvest her mouth watered at the thought of mashed potatoes thick with cream.

And cream they had in abundance. The week before the Tates were expected, Mary and Bethel made cottage cheese. They mixed fresh milk with cream, and scalded it, mindful that it should not scorch. To this they added vinegar to make the milk curdle and let it stand to cool on the sideboard in the dining room, away from the heat of the kitchen stove. Then they used a square of cheesecloth to strain off the whey, salted the soft curds, and put it into a covered crock to keep in the springhouse. They had no rennet, for there was no calf to butcher, and so the cheese did not have the same firmness or rich flavor that it might have possessed, but it was still very tasty and would make a welcome addition to the bill of fare. Gabe ate a whole dessert dish full of it, and had to be dissuaded from helping himself to more while they salted the next batch.

Cullen would buy a barrel of flour when he went into town to collect the visitors, and with what was left in the old one Mary and Bethel got a head start on the baking. They made bread, three times as much as Bethel had baked in a week that spring before the flour ran low, and they shaped dainty little rolls as well. The other things would be best made fresh, but Mary talked Bethel through her mother's favorite receipt for vanilla cake and a couple of other confections that had appeared frequently on the Tate table in New York. They also made a small batch of toffee for the children, and candied some late-blooming blossoms for garnishes.

The issue of meat was a difficult one. There was one ham left untouched in the smokehouse, and this Bethel intended to roast, but otherwise they had nothing left but the salt pork kept back for adding strength to the vegetables. They would be able to serve chicken, at least. There were two tired-out layers whose time had come, but there was no question of serving these to Frances and Jeremiah. Those, Mary declared, would have to be killed anyhow, because Meg and Nate and Elijah needed meat if they were going to keep on working twelve hours a day in the tobacco. Bethel gave her a long look at this, but did not argue. Killing a couple of tired-out chickens was preferable to taking one of the hogs at a time when two-thirds of the carcass would spoil before it could be eaten. But it also meant taking young pullets to offer in the house, and that was harder to do, but in the end they had to settle for the lesser waste. Cullen could pick up a few pounds of salted mackerel, and they could serve fish on some nights. Still, there would be little variety to put before the guests.

"It jus' a shame they ain't puttin' off this visit another month," Bethel said as Mary made the final notation on her meal plan. "Once the tobacco slow down a bit, Mist' Cullen can go hunting an' bring back some venison. P'raps you can talk 'im into goin' out anyhow? Do him no harm to take a day for hisself, in the shade an' the quiet, doin' somethin' he like an' knowin' he helping at the same time."

Mary smiled regretfully. She would have loved to send Cullen out for a day of hunting, but she knew he would never agree to it. They were on the second pass through the tobacco now, and the higher leaves kept right on ripening – and it was the higher leaves, on the well-protected middle of the stalk, that fetched the best price and had to be taken at precisely the right time. He was already resenting the afternoon he would lose collecting Jeremiah's family at the station.

"A deer would be just as much of a waste as a hog," Mary said. "We can't get it cool enough to preserve properly."

"True," said Bethel. "That true. On'y we ain't been feedin' the deer up all year."

_*discidium*_

Cullen stood in the doorway of the tobacco barn, watching with his heart in his throat while Elijah fingered one of the broad leaves thoughtfully, his other hand holding the lantern aloft in the grey dawn. It was Monday morning, the first of October, and neither Cullen nor Nate could be out picking because they had to keep themselves looking presentable for the after-dinner drive into Meridian. They would be taking both the buggy and the wagon: the latter because there was no room in the buggy for three guests, a driver, a barrel of flour, and the trunks and baggage a pair of well-to-do Yankees would undoubtedly bring, and the former because Frances Tate would never consent to ride in a wagon. When Mary had pointed this out in her quiet, diplomatic way, Cullen had actually shouted – something he did rarely in his wife's soothing presence. But at every turn this disruption of the knife-edge balance of the harvest season seemed to thwart him, and the loss of two able bodies for what amounted to almost eight hours of daylight was too much to bear. In the end, of course, he had given in: Mary had a way of talking him 'round, and he knew the situation was already well out of control. A little more chaos could not make that much of a difference.

Still he hoped that Elijah's verdict would be favorable. The morning, at least, could be salvaged if the first batch of leaves was ready to be moved into the kiln. The tobacco barn was built in two halves divided exactly beneath the ridgepole of the sharply sloping roof. The south half was the drying shed, with the wall-slats widely spaced to allow free flow of air from without. When the tobacco was picked, the poles were left out in the sun until the dew evaporated, and then moved into the south side of the barn. They rested suspended between rails, pegged to the east and west walls with each pair twelve inches below the last. The top rails were filled first, poles set six inches apart with the leaves hanging down from them. On the next pair, the poles were offset so that they were exactly between the two nearest poles of the upper row. Then on the third pair, the poles were placed directly under those suspended from the top rails, and so on down. In this way the tobacco leaves did not touch one another, neither above nor below nor to any side. Placing the poles was finicky work, but the sight of the barn, now better than four-fifths full, was impressive and grimly satisfying.

Once the tobacco dried enough that the lurid green faded to a brownish-yellow, the poles were moved into the other side of the barn. It had a similar arrangement of rails, but the walls were solid, the boards close together and tightly chinked where they had shrunken over the years. This was the kiln, where three fires would be kept smoldering continuously, day and night for weeks until all of the tobacco was cured. On the Bohannon plantation, all of the lugs and the top leaves, which were of middling quality, were fire-cured in the kiln and sold for pipe smoking and for chewing. Most of the center leaves would be too, but the very best would be left to cure in the open air: a slower process used for cigar tobacco. They could expect to get only a couple of hogsheads' worth of best-quality tobacco out of the crop, and with the extra time required it would almost not be worth the effort, except that the financial shoestring was so taut. Cullen could get an extra dollar dollars for a hundred pounds of best air-cured tobacco. Two full hogsheads would bring an extra twenty: enough to buy a pair of boots or shoes for everyone on the place. That was not something to be sneered at.

"They's good," said Elijah, ducking deeply so that he did not disturb the lowest leaves as he moved back to the threshold. "All them blue ones. We can move 'em."

At the beginning of the picking, Mary had gone through her rag-bag and cut ribbons of brightly colored cloth, sorted by color in willow baskets. When they were brought in from the field, the field workers tied a rag around the sharpened end before the pole was raised on the rails. Each week they used a different color, so that there was no confusion over which tobacco had been picked first and sitting longest. Tobacco of the same age had to be cured in lots, so that it was ready at the same time and could be easily sorted and packed. The poles with the blue cloths represented the result of their first week's picking, and the poorest-quality haul of the entire crop. It was a simple system, but an effective one, and proposing it had been one of Cullen's few genuinely worthwhile contributions to the farming effort.

"Good," he said, looking up at the rows of neatly-hung poles. They could spend the morning moving them from the south side to the north, and with a little luck they would be finished by dinnertime. He could lay the fires before he left for Meridian, and set Lottie to tend them. There was still no help for the three or four hours he and Nate would lose, but at least they would not have to sit idle all morning just to keep clean.

As soon as the sun was bright enough that they could see what they were doing in the kiln, they set to work. They took the lower poles first, and placed these highest in the other side of the barn. Climbing a stepladder while keeping a laden tobacco rod level was a challenging business, particularly once the leaves had started to dry and could tear much more easily than fresh ones. They worked in pairs, but not as they did in the field. Cullen and Nate were best matched in height, and Meg and Elijah were not so very different. It was easier to work with someone who saw the world at about the same level.

It made a pleasant change working out of the sun, and the slaves talked happily as they worked. Cullen felt uncomfortably removed from the conversation, for they were daydreaming about the price the crop would bring and the luxury of a full storehouse and new boots. He did not understand how they could bear to dream about such things, when only a fraction of the crop was picked and none of it was cured, and they had no idea what the market was like this year and there were still so many things that could go wrong. When Meg started talking about the new dress she wanted to make Lottie to replace the threadbare and too-short one the child wore now, Cullen had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her to shut her mouth. It galled him that he could not provide these things when needed. In the old days there had always been more than enough food to last out the year, and bolts of dry goods laid by in the pantry, and money on hand for necessities like shoes and buttons and hairpins. He had not realized then what a comfort it was not to be worn to the last thread by harvest time.

They still had twenty-two poles left when it was time to break for dinner. "Meg an' me can finish 'em this afternoon," said Elijah. "We still goin' have time to bring in the last of the corn."

The corn that had been drying in the meadow was finally ready to be moved to the huge bin in the barn. Once the tobacco was sold and the winter wheat planted, the men would spend rainy winter afternoons sitting on stools in the empty stall next to Bonnie's, shucking and shelling the corn to be mixed with oats and clover for feed. Or, Cullen thought grimly, packed in sacks to be carried to the grist mill in Meridian. He had never yet had to make meal out of feed corn, but if something – anything – prevented him from getting the full yield of his fifty acres of tobacco to market, it might well come to that. He tried to see this prospect as insurance against starvation, but he could not quite manage it.

Bethel was tossing steamed turnip greens with butter and fennel when Cullen came into the kitchen. She looked up from her work and frowned.

"Wha' spooked your horse?" she asked. "There somethin' wrong in the tobacco?"

Cullen's eyes caught hers gratefully. It seemed that someone, at least, shared his worries and realized that they were not safely out of the woods yet. "Not a thing," he said. "Not yet."

"Tha's all you can reason'bly hope for," she said, but she did not try to tell him that his fears were unfounded. Just at that moment Cullen wanted to hug her. "You been sweatin'. I hope you stayed out them fields?"

"I got more sense than that," he said, holding up his hands to show her that they were not soiled. "We've been moving the first lot into the kiln."

"Praise the Lord," Bethel breathed, closing her eyes reverently. Then she wiped her hands on her apron and went to the dish dresser for a cup. She took the coffee pot off the back of the stove and poured, handing it to him. "Sit an' drink that," she said. "Dinner be ready direc'ly. I tol' Missus Mary she can' be in here helpin' in the kitchen while her high-flown New York family around, but it seems I's got used to the extra pair of hands. Slowin' me down workin' by myself."

Cullen poured a little sorghum into the cup and stirred it. The brew was hot and strong, and he drained it away even before he found his way to the bench. It was strange how working in the shade seemed to tire him out after weeks in the fields, and his shoulders were starting to stiffen up after the constant controlled reaching. He found he was constantly aware of every little muscle in his body now that he used them so ceaselessly.

"If we got a few minutes 'til dinner I think I'll go spend it with my boy," he said. "Not meaning to offend."

Bethel laughed shortly. "Mist' Cullen, if I thought you'd rather sit here than go see that chile, I'd be shamed that I raised you up wrong. I think he in the parlor, though he bes' not be makin' a mess of it!"

Cullen nodded and went through to the dining room. He halted near the head of the table, puzzled by a curious buzzing sort of clacking sound. It seemed at once familiar and oddly out of place, and then he realized why. It was the noise of Mary's sewing machine, and it belonged in the upstairs hall instead of the dining room. She was just around the corner now, instead of in Grandpappy's bedroom, because heaven forbid the Tates sleep in a room that also served an actual, practical purpose!

"What's that racket?" he said cheerfully as he stepped through the door and into the corridor. "I thought you were… oh."

He stopped short, surprised and a little embarrassed. Mary was sitting at the machine, her foot frozen over the treadle and her hands still poised on the cloth. She had brought the secretary chair from the parlor to sit upon, and her broad skirts billowed over it. But beside her, where she had been looking fascinatedly over her mistress's shoulder, was Lottie. The little girl was stripped down to her shift, a clean but painstakingly made-over garment with a gaping neck and no sleeves at all. It was also too short, coming well above the knee, and the child's skinny legs looked impossibly long and woefully bare. She took one look at Cullen, her color rising, and then scurried around the corner into the parlor.

Mary's head turned swiftly to follow her, and then swiveled back to her husband. "Oh, dear," she said softly. "We were just taking in the side seams. I didn't expect you in until dinnertime."

"It is dinnertime; Bethel's just running a little behind," said Cullen, still looking towards the parlor door. "Shoot, I didn't mean to embarrass her. You all right in there, Lottie?"

"Yes, Massa." Lottie's voice came from the other side of the wall. "I's all right. I jus' gots no clothes on, tha's all."

From behind the sofa, Gabe said; "You gots clothes on, 'Ottie. I sees 'em."

"Yes," she said to him. "But this jus' my shif'. I ain' meant to be running 'round in jus' my shif'. Ain't fittin'."

Cullen looked around and spied Lottie's work dress lying limp and sorry-looking on the little table in the corner. He picked it up and approached the parlor door, keeping himself to the left of it and reaching around the jamb with his elbow. "Here you go; put this back on," he said. From the other side of the wall he felt her hand close on the garment, and he released it. Then he turned to Mary. "What's that there?" he asked.

"A new dress for Lottie," Mary said, starting up the machine again. "Her old one isn't fit to be worn, and her other is too short to be decent, too."

"I can see it's a dress for Lottie: where'd you get the material?" he asked.

Mary reached the end of the seam and clipped the thread with her tiny silver scissors. She turned up an edge of the fabric so that he could see the print more clearly. It was her blue sprigged calico; one of her own work dresses. Mary had cut up one of her own dresses to make a new frock for the child.

Seeing his expression, she smiled. "It's the one I was wearing the day Gabe wandered off," she explained. "The sleeves and basque were all stained with tobacco juice: not fit to be seen. Bethel tried, but she couldn't get the stains out."

Cullen grimaced. This did nothing to ease his conscience, as it has been his filthy hands that had stained the dress. But Mary was smiling proudly. "There wasn't a thing wrong with the skirt except the hem was worn," she said. "Almost six yards of cloth: more than enough for a good dress for Lottie."

Cullen drew his hand over his mouth, his callouses rasping against his whiskers. "I got me the cleverest wife in Mississippi," he said. "What about a pattern?"

"I just sized up the last one a little," said Mary. "She's growing longer more quickly than she's growing wider. Isn't that so, Lottie?"

"Yass'm," Lottie said, coming back out of the parlor and dipping a little curtsey. She had her dress back on, and now that he was looking Cullen could see that it really _wasn't_ fit to be worn anymore. The elbows were so thin that he could see the threads of the weave, and the pattern was faded. The hem only just brushed her knees, and it was fraying, and the skirt was covered in green stains from working in the garden and the corn. He tried to remember whether her other frock was any better, but he couldn't, and if Mary said it was too short, it was too short.

"We was almos' don, Mist' Cullen," the child explained, watching as Mary turned the garment right-side out and settled the bodice lining with skillful fingers. "Tha's why I didn' put my dress back on: I was goin' try it on again right off."

"Well, I'm sorry I startled you," he said.

"I think that's all we'll do for now, Lottie," Mary said. "We'll be dining in a few minutes. Would you take Gabe and wash his hands?"

"Yass'm," Lottie agreed, skipping back into the parlor. A moment later the negotiations began to get the boy away from his horses.

Cullen watched as Mary neatly folded the half-finished garment and got to her feet. He stepped forward and slipped his arm about her waist. "Can I have a quiet word?" he asked.

She nodded serenely and let him lead her around the foot of the staircase and out onto the veranda. He moved to the left of the door so that they would not be immediately spied by Gabe when he left the parlor with Lottie. Mary looked at him expectantly.

"It's about your brother," said Cullen.

Mary's face collapsed contritely. "I wish I had never even suggested this," she said. "If I had thought for a moment he truly would come… I wish he'd had the sense not to."

"It ain't too late yet," Cullen teased. "I could bribe the signalman to send the train right on through to Mobile."

Mary laughed a little, and shook her head. "That's surely against the law," she said.

"Maybe." Cullen shrugged. "But listen. While he's here, I don't want you working. I know Bethel's chased you out of the kitchen, but I don't want you tending the garden or making the beds or doing the wash, either. You just look after our boy and entertain your guests and be the lady of the house, all right?"

She pressed her lips together. "Cullen, I couldn't," she said. "Everyone else will be working, and Bethel has so much to do, and Lottie can't manage the garden on her own."

"I'll have Meg help her in the mornings," he said. "Nate and me can both pick onto Elijah's pole: it'll be crowded, but we can do it. I need you to do this for me, Mary. I need you to wear your pretty clothes, and sit in the parlor and sew, maybe read aloud to the guests, play with Gabe, preside over meals. I can't take time out to play the idle planter, but at least I can make it look like I'm treating you right."

"You do treat me right," Mary said. "There's not a thing I do around this place that is hard, or unpleasant, or painful. It's not at all like what you do yourself."

"Never mind what I do and don't do," Cullen muttered. He cupped his hands over her elbows, feeling her warmth through the soft cloth. "Will you do this for me? I don't want him thinking… don't want him saying… I don't want him going back up North and telling your friends and your parents and everyone who'll listen how you married some ignorant, bankrupt Southerner who's got you working like a farmwife."

"If I'm a farmwife, I'm proud to be one," Mary said stoutly, tilting her chin. At his anxious look her expression softened and she reached to place her hand on his cheek. Her thumb stroke his beard gently. "I understand," she murmured. "It's a matter of pride. I'll do it. It isn't going to be pleasant for me, but I'll do it."

"It ain't just pride," said Cullen. "You got to keep 'em entertained, too. I don't want them nosing about the place making trouble. I don't much even want them talking to Nate."

Mary nodded. "Jeremiah won't understand," she said. "Even after four years I'm not sure I do, except that I know you're a good man and you do right by your people, and they may not be free but they aren't miserable. Except poor Bethel, when you're wearing yourself out." She smiled tremulously. "I'm afraid it will be a difficult couple of weeks, Cullen, but we'll get through it together."

He sighed softly and bent to kiss her. "You promise?" he asked, securing her pledge not only in the matter of maintaining appearances, but in the vow that they were and would remain united before her brother.

"I promise," she said.

_*discidium*_

Cullen sat on the buggy box, doing his best to keep from slouching into the position his tired back wanted to assume. He was perspiring under his hat, and he removed it, fanning his face with the brim as he dug out his handkerchief. It was October, for heaven's sake: it had no right to be this hot. Bonnie was shifting restlessly in the traces, while Pike lapped quietly at the water the station-boy had brought. Cullen had pulled up right near the platform to wait for the train out of Memphis. Nate, sitting on the seat of the buckboard and holding the reins of the mule team, was further along the southbound track, near where the baggage car might be expected to pull up. The station was abuzz with activity. The first cotton bales were ready to go to market, and under the open-air shelters of the depot crews of darkies hauled them and stacked them and took orders from overseers sent to ship the produce of the plantations. The train on the northbound track was being loaded with sacks of corn and crates of fresh vegetables destined for sale in Corinth or St. Louis. Firemen were crawling over the sooty black engine, checking valves and raking out charcoal and filling the tender. One was polishing the side of the locomotive with a greasy rag so that the legend _Mobile and Ohio Railroad_ stood out brightly once more in its golden paint. The shouts of workers laying track for a new carshed came over the roof of the stationhouse, accompanied by the ringing of hammers on the spikes.

Cullen took all of this in with wonder. The sleepy little hamlet of his boyhood years had blossomed into a busy town built on the steel skeleton of the intersecting tracks. His grandfather had been among the men who had foreseen what the railroad could mean to the country – especially to this vast and only half-tamed country. He had used his cotton wealth and his political influence to support the efforts first to create the railhead, and then to attract the second line that had made Meridian an essential junction between the Memphis, Mobile, Jackson and Selma. Anything that had to travel across Mississippi came through Meridian. Anything that wanted to get from Alabama to New Orleans by rail had to pass through Meridian. Anyone changing trains stopped in Meridian. The trains themselves only had one opportunity to turn around on their tracks between Memphis and the end of the line, and that was here in Meridian. The heart of the South was its cotton, but it was the arteries of the railroads that now kept its lifeblood flowing. There was something fiercely inspiring about this innovation of Man that had opened up the quiet places of the world to trade and commerce, to progress. It was exhilarating to sit here and feel the frontiers of humanity expanding all around him.

He supposed he ought to be proud, too, knowing as he did that his grandpappy had had a hand in all of this. The truth was that he didn't feel proud at all. He felt ashamed of himself for failing to live up to that legacy. His grandfather had come to a wild land at a time when it was still Indian territory. He had carved a plantation out of empty forest, and he had built it into a successful thousand-acre place manned by dozens of slaves. In a few short years Cullen had managed to whittle that legacy down to a struggling oversized farm just one freak storm from disaster. His grandfather had conjured up a railroad that had spawned a bustling town and would nourish it into a flourishing city that would stand forever. Cullen picked tobacco to sell so that he could buy up seeds to grow more tobacco next year. His grandfather had been a giant who still loomed tall in local legend. Cullen was nothing more than a small, discontented man living a small, discontented life.

He realized he was shrinking in the buggy seat, and he straightened again. He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter: that he had a wife who loved him, a beautiful, clever and courageous wife; that he had a son any man could be proud of. But however he cherished his family, he still wanted more. More for himself, and more for them. He wanted his son to grow up to be more than just a struggling planter. He wanted his wife to have the scope she needed to shine like the great lady she was. He wanted to be able to look after Bethel properly when she got too old and tired to run the house; to allow Elijah his well-earned rest; to train up Lottie to be a house servant and maybe someday a head woman, instead of a maid-of-all-work who labored in the garden and the corn because there weren't enough field hands. He wanted to be able to look around and to see what he had created, what he had built for himself and the people he loved, not what he had inherited and was barely holding on to. And he had no idea how to achieve any of those things.

The clarion howl of a train-whistle roused him from his reverie. The three o'clock out of Memphis was pulling in. Cullen tightened his hold on the reins to quiet his horses, even though he knew they would not bolt. They were too well-trained and far too fearless to bolt. Still, they didn't much like trains – he had never met a horse that did – and it would be a comfort to them to know that he was firmly in control. As he had expected, Pike tugged on his bit just to reassure himself that Cullen was paying attention. Bonnie whinnied ferociously, but the sound was lost in the clatter of the wheels and shriek of the brakes the stentorian roar as the train let off steam.

The locomotive rattled past, and behind it the boxcars tightly bolted to safeguard their cargo. The flat cars were next, piled high with freshly-sawn lumber from the vast forests in the north of the state. Then came stock cars: pigs squealing and cattle lowing in protest of the noise and the drag upon their bodies as the engine slowed. The baggage cars were next, and finally the passenger coaches, glass windows glinting in the sun. Cullen could see his buggy reflected in them, rippling and jumping as the cars moved, slower and slower until finally their steel wheels ground to a halt and the train was still.

Conductors flew open the doors of the passenger cars, and porters hurried across the platform to start unloading the baggage. People began to pile out. Young men always seemed to be first, springing down off the train without bothering with the steps, gunny sacks or carpetbags thrown over their shoulders. They were always in a hurry, though what they were hurrying to not one of them could say. The young men of the South were a vast source of untapped energy, their settled lives inadequate to fulfill the unarticulated yearnings of their spirits. That was precisely Cullen's problem, too. By nature he was filled with vigor and the desire to do great things, but instead he spent that strength and those longings in the endless battle with the mud: to till it, to shape it, to make it produce. He was at war with the mud, and the mud was winning, and the prize it wanted was his spirit.

Next came harried-looking women, usually accompanied by young children and a darkie or two. These would be wives of railroad men or entrepreneurs who had come to Meridian to build up businesses where the county was thriving, and had sent on for their families once they were established. An elderly couple was next, arm in arm and looking more than a little rattled. Likely it was their first journey by train. Visiting a married daughter, maybe, thought Cullen. Three young ladies were next, broad hoops impractical for travelling bouncing and jostling through the narrow door and opening like sunflowers in the open space of the platform. A stern-looking older gentleman with meticulously groomed whiskers was on their heels, watching them with the possessive air of a chicken-hawk and brandishing an umbrella as if he meant to rebuff with violence any trespass upon the virtue of his charges. Their father, or perhaps an uncle.

Cullen shifted his attention to the last car before the caboose. That was the first-class car, with upholstered seats instead of bare benches and a stovepipe at each end. It was positioned at the rear so that the smoke and cinders from the engine dispersed as much as possible before reaching the wealthy passengers. He did not doubt that Jeremiah Tate would have booked passage in that carriage for his bride and her delicate sensibilities.

Sure enough, the very next person out of that car was a girl of about seven years, wearing a camel-colored frock and a matching pardessus jacket decorated with a large quantity of coffee-colored braid stitched in a Greek key pattern. Her golden curls, somewhat wilted, jounced from beneath a coordinating bonnet as she hopped one-footed down the steps. She was showing rather more spirit than Cullen would have expected from Frances Tate's daughter and he began to think that he was mistake about the identity of the child. Then a stocky mustached man in a charcoal-colored travelling coat stepped out after her, offering his hand to a whey-faced woman who called out nervously to the girl not to wander too far. Even after four years they were instantly recognizable: Jeremiah and Frances Tate.

Cullen hopped down from the buggy box and climbed onto the platform, not troubling with the stairs. He did tug his waistcoat straight however, and tucked his handkerchief into his pocket, holding his hat respectfully against his chest as he approached.

"Miss Frances," he said courteously, bowing to the lady. She seemed flustered, but managed to put out one hand, clad in a rather sooty glove.

"Mr. Bohannon," she said as he took her hand and raised it in the suitable courteous approximation of the far older gesture that ended with a kiss. "I mean to say Cullen, of course: we are family now."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Have been for quite some time now. But of course, you knew me longer in my unwed state."

"Indeed we did," said Jeremiah, pulling out his gold pocketwatch and consulting it unnecessarily: there was a clock in the cupola of the stationhouse. "You spirited Mary away so quickly that we scarcely had time to think of you as a married couple.""

"We were anxious to depart on our honeymoon," Cullen said, grinning affably. "After which, I confess, I'd had my fill of snow." He turned to the child and bowed to her. "Why, Missy, you've grown right up," he told her. "I don't suppose you even remember me." She had been younger than Gabe when he and Mary were wed, and he remembered her for her fondness of trying to shelter under the ladies' hoops at large gatherings.

"You're Uncle Bohannon," the child said neatly. "You married Auntie Mary and brought her to Mississippi."

"So I did. And what do you think of Mississippi?" Cullen asked.

"It's hot," said Missy. Her mother cleared her throat and pulled a rosewood fan out of her reticule.

"I ought to see about the baggage," said Tate, looking over his shoulder and up the platform. "You can never trust these porters to put things where they belong. I swear that fool in St. Louis put the big steamer trunk in upside-down."

"No worry about that here," said Cullen. "My man will take care of it."

And there it was: the first mention of the subject that was going to sear between them like a firebrand for the next two weeks. It was more than a little amusing to watch the man's face turn color from New England city white to florid puce. His lips pursed and his brows knitted and Cullen wondered, not for the first time, how this man reconciled his loudly proclaimed principles with visiting a home where he had to know he would be waited on by slaves.

"Yes, of course," Jeremiah said in a strangled voice. "Your _man_."

"Nate is very reliable," Cullen assured him, as if that were the real concern. "And he knows how to get things done. Have you much baggage?"

"Two trunks," said Frances faintly. "And the portmanteaux of course…" She turned to look at the carriage. "Will they be bringing out the portmanteaux?"

"Assuredly," said Cullen. With Nate out of earshot he could make the most of his university lexis. He knew that Mary's brother liked to try to dismiss him as an uneducated Southern oaf with more charm than breeding, probably because it made it easier to explain to his Yankee friends how his sister had come to marry a slaveholder. And although Cullen was only willing to stretch so far with his choice of language, it did not hurt to remind the man that he was every bit his equal when it came to schooling. Better than his equal, as a matter of fact, for he knew from Mary that Tate only had two years' college to his not-quite-three, and had not made the best use of them.

Missy looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn't seem able to pluck up the courage to say it. For a moment Cullen wondered whether she was shy about strangers, and then he remembered the rigidly enforced rule in Jeremiah Tate's household that children should only speak when spoken to.

"How can I be of service to you, Miss?" he asked, looking right at her so that there should be no mistake about whom he was addressing.

She maintained her prim expression, but her eyes looked relieved. "Is there somewhere we can get a drink of water?" she asked. "The water on the train tastes wrong."

"Missy!" said her mother. "You mustn't say such things."

"No, ma'am, she's right," said Cullen. "Train water never tastes right. I think it must be on account of the cisterns. Here, Missy, I got a jug and a tin cup in the buggy. You and your mama can have a drink while your pappy and I go see how Nate's getting on with the baggage."

He offered her his hand and with a glance at her mother she took it, following him to the edge of the platform. Cullen stepped down and turned to lift her after him, but she drew back.

"I shall take the stairs," she said with absurd girlish dignity. Cullen inclined his head to indicate she might, and she walked up the platform to the steps and descended with care. Jeremiah was leading Frances in the same direction, but she kept glancing over her shoulder at the conductor offloading luggage from the overhead racks.

"Our cases!" she exclaimed as a pair of dark leather portmanteaux and a little carpetbag appeared. She put her free hand on her husband's arm. "Do go and fetch them before someone steals them!"

"May I escort you the rest of the way, Miss Frances?" Cullen asked, offering his arm. She clutched it hurriedly, shooing her husband with anxious eyes.

Tate frowned, and Cullen almost laughed. Apparently he didn't like the idea of leaving his wife in the hands of his brother-in-law. But Frances's wordless urging sent him hurrying to fetch the baggage.

Cullen opened the buggy door and helped her up into the shade of the top. Then he turned to Missy, who was standing at a safe distance and eyeing Pike and Bonnie with admiration. "You'll ride up front with me, Miss Missy, if you don't object," he said. He grinned. "Maybe once we're out of town you could drive them a piece."

"Oh, I couldn't!" Missy exclaimed, trying to sound horrified but coming across far more breathless with longing. She glanced at her mother, who obviously gave her a quelling look over her uncle's shoulder, for she added more coolly; "Ladies don't drive carriages."

Cullen boosted her up onto the driver's seat, and took out the earthenware jug beneath it. He poured water for the child, and then for Frances. By that time Jeremiah had returned, grappling with the three cases which seemed to be a great deal heavier than they looked.

"Let me take that," Cullen said. He relieved the man of the carpetbag and the left-hand portmanteau. It did not seem much above average weight to him, but he did not remark upon that. "We'll be back presently, ladies," he said.

Nate was only about fifty feet away, directing two darkies who were loading a hefty barrel into the back of the wagon. Cullen frowned as he looked in that direction. "Though you said it was just the two trunks," he said.

"The trunks and the barrels," said Tate.

Cullen looked at him, eyebrows raised. "Barrels?" he echoed. How much baggage did a family of three need for a fortnight? "What's in the barrels?"

"Apples!" said Missy cheerfully. "And Christmas presents!"

"Christmas presents," Cullen repeated. He was not sure he liked the sound of that.

"Mother and Father had a great many things they wanted to send," said Jeremiah. The nasal quality of his voice was already irritating Cullen. "They had to restrict themselves to a single barrel. Freight costs are so exorbitant these days."

"It wouldn't have been a problem if we could have come all the way by rail," said Frances, fanning herself fervently. "Or even with the steamboats. It was the _stagecoach_!"

She spoke the word in the hushed, horrified tone ordinarily reserved for mentions of Perdition, and Cullen put on a sympathetic face. "You had to come part of the way by coach, then," he said.

"_Sixty miles_!" moaned Frances. "It was dreadful. I don't think my spine will ever recover."

"Ah, well, no sacrifice too great to see our dear sister," said Jeremiah. He held out the other case and Cullen took it reflexively before realizing what the gesture implied, two fingers awkwardly gripping his hat. "Would you take these down to your man yourself?" he asked. "It looks as though he's got everything, and I do hate to leave the ladies unattended."

Cullen managed a thin smile. "Of course," he said. "In Mississippi you'll find we put the comfort of our ladies above all other considerations. Miss Frances, Missy." He gave them a small bow and strode off down towards the wagon.


	26. Girlhood Affections

**Chapter Twenty-Six: Girlhood Affections**

Mary was sitting on her rocker on the veranda when the buggy came up the drive. Gabe was at her feet, playing with a ball and an old tin cup. He had wanted to run down to climb the paddock fence, but Mary had managed to distract him. She had dressed him in his good suit of blue sateen, and she intended to keep it clean. But for the absence of shoes and stockings he was the perfect dapper little gentleman, his curls tamed with a dollop of Cullen's quince seed oil and parted sharply on the left. The glossy jacket buttoned onto the trousers at the waist so that it could not creep up as he played, and the jet buttons glittered even in the shade. Mary herself was wearing her lavender church dress with the deep flounces, and she had her full hoop beneath it. She had even dressed her hair with her crimson velvet ribbons, and her lace collar was fastened with her gold bar pin. She hoped that she looked every inch the planter's lady, as Cullen obviously wished her to.

She understood, or thought she understood, why he had insisted upon this. It was not simply a matter of pride before guests, nor the fact that someone did have to keep the visitors entertained. Cullen had doubts about the life he had made for her, deep and unsettling doubts. He wanted to prove to himself that he could still support her in ease and luxury; the pretty superfluity in which she had been raised as the youngest child of a wealthy man. What he did not believe, however she tried to make him see it, was that for all its strains and worries she preferred this life to the one she had left behind in New York. She loved the plantation, quiet though it was. She loved the modest house with its cheery yellow paint. She loved the willows that whispered in the wind of a summer evening. She loved the magnolia that perfumed the whole yard through the spring. She loved the sunrise that stained the gentle hills a glorious crimson every morning. She loved Pike and Bonnie, and faithful, tired old Jeb who just at present was napping in the shade under the bench by the door. She loved Bethel, who had come to trust her and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her through the trials of this lean year. She loved little Lottie, who was so willing and hard-working. She loved dear sweet Meg, and faithful old Elijah who for all his superior knowledge never made Cullen face his own shortcomings. She supposed she even loved Nate, quiet and incomprehensible though he was, for he worked so tirelessly and was cool-headed in a crisis. She loved her little boy with every fiber of her heart. And she loved Cullen. How she loved him! She would have thrown away all the pearls of India to be with him. Giving up drawing-room socials and long evenings in a stuffy opera-box was no trial at all.

Yet somehow Cullen didn't seem to see that. He believed, or at the very least feared that she was discontent. Mary thought this was because he was discontent himself. She knew his life was not shaping up to be what he had imagined, but she did not know how to help him set it right. She did not even know precisely what it was he wanted; she thought that even he did not know. But she knew it was not this: hard work and slim reward, constant useless drudgery for nothing more than money to buy stores and seed for next year. It was wearing upon him, and she could see it, but she did not know how to stop it. The philosophical question was insoluble; the practical questions were insurmountable. He had – they had – responsibilities they could not simply lay by for an indistinct dream.

The buggy was drawing near the house now, and Mary got gracefully to her feet. "Stand up, Gabe dearest," she said. "Here comes Pappy with Uncle Jeremiah and Aunt Frances."

"Pappy?" The boy scrambled to his feet, impressively unhindered by his stiff suit. He turned around and spied the carriage, and danced from one foot to the other in glee. "Pappy!" he cried.

He knew better than to charge out to meet the horses with their strong, high-stepping legs and ironclad hooves, but from the light in his eyes and the spring in his feet he obviously wished to. "Hold my hand, dear, and stand straight like a little gentleman," Mary said. "What do you say when Uncle and Auntie step down?"

"How d'you do!" Gabe recited cheerfully. He waved his free hand vigorously. "Pappy!" he shouted. "Pappy, you's home!"

Cullen stopped the buggy just short of the front yard gate instead of bringing it in as he usually did. This was the more widely accepted way of approaching a house, of course, and he was conceding his usual lax attitude out of deference to the guests. He flung the reins down over the fence-rail and hopped out of the buggy, opening the door and drawing back the laprobe from Frances's skirts. Beside her, Jeremiah took the other corner, frowning a little as Cullen offered Frances his hand. She took it and stepped down, her skirts with their travel hoop shrinking and then billowing as she passed the narrow space of the buggy door. Jeremiah climbed down after her, taking her arm from Cullen so that he was free to round the carriage and lift down the child who had been riding beside him. Mary realized abruptly that it was little Missy, once upon a time her darling pet, all grown up into a dignified young lady of seven.

"Jeremiah!" Mary said with a loving smile as he approached the porch with his wife. "And Frances; how wonderful to see you again!"

There was no need for pretense now. For all her doubts about the visit, and for all the inconvenience and worry it was brewing, in that moment all she could see was her big brother, whom she loved for all his faults, stepping towards her with a smile on his face and love in his eyes.

"Mary Beth!" he said as he stepped up onto the porch, released his hold on Frances and stepped to kiss her cheeks. "You haven't changed one bit." He clasped her hand in both of his and blinked very rapidly. "Not one bit."

"You've grown a mustache," Mary observed, gently playful. "You look very distinguished."

"You know how it is in the business world," said Jeremiah. "For the first few years the old guard accepts you as a bit of a young prodigy, but then if you show no signs of growing up they begin to get skittish."

Mary nodded, though she did not really know how it was at all. Jeremiah was almost fourteen years her senior: by the time she had come along their father had been firmly established as one of the old guard himself. Remembering her duties as hostess, she turned her attention to her sister-in-law.

"Frances, it was so very kind of you to agree to come such a long way just to see me," she said. "It must have been such a tiring journey."

"It was," said Frances. "Not that I've any objection to travelling by rail, but four days of it at one go is more than I can take. At least on the steamboats we had a proper berth to stretch out in, but the _stagecoach_! Oh, my dear, how ever did you manage it in wintertime?"

Mary's eyes flitted over her shoulder and caught Cullen's. He was standing at the bottom of the steps with his hand on Missy's shoulder. His eyes twinkled mischievously and his lips curled in an inconspicuous smirk. They had kept each other warm, of course, as newlyweds would; though certainly within the bounds of propriety, at least on the stage. They had quite likely had farther to go by road, as well: in recent years the railroads had seemed to spring up out of the very earth.

"It was so long ago, I'm afraid I scarcely remember it," said Mary. "But you must be anxious to wash up and to change. Do come in and Bethel will show you to your room. Nate will…" She glanced questioningly at Cullen.

"He's about ten minutes behind," he said. "The mules take their time with a loaded wagon."

There was a queer note to his voice, and Mary tried to read his expression, but he was guarding it and in any case she had to see to her guests. "Perhaps we can all have a nice cool drink, then, once you've washed your hands and faces. The soot does get everywhere, no matter how they try to keep it out, doesn't it?"

"Positively everywhere," Frances mourned. Then she turned and beckoned to her daughter. "Missy, say good day to your Auntie Mary."

"Good day, Auntie Mary," the child said, curtseying prettily. Mary released her hold on Gabe and held out her arms.

"It's so wonderful to see you; and how you've grown!" she said as Missy came obediently forward to embrace her. She did not hug tightly, but merely touched her hands to Mary's forearms. "I suppose you scarcely remember me!"

"I do. A little bit," said Missy. She had her mother's strong Maine accent and bobbing pale curls. "I remember your blue gown: I wanted one just like it."

"I wore that at my wedding supper," Mary said, her smile blooming afresh at the memory. "You must have been peeking through the bannisters."

Missy blushed a little, and suddenly Mary realized that her own child was being remarkably quiet. He had not called out to his father again, much less hurtled down the steps to meet him, and looking down at her side she saw that Gabe was pressed close against her hoop, his left hand reaching across his body to clutch a fistful of the third tier of her gown while his right thumb had crept into his mouth. He was staring up at Jeremiah with wide and wary eyes.

"This is Gabe," Mary said. "Gabriel. Gabe, what do you say to your Uncle Jeremiah?"

"How'doo," Gabe whispered around his thumb. Mary reached down to gently brush it away from his mouth. He looked at it for a moment, surprised to find it once more level with his elbow, and then curled his hand around a second bunch of crisp cotton.

Cullen chuckled and stepped up onto the porch, slipping around Jeremiah and picking up his boy. "Now, then, son, there's no cause to be shy," he said bracingly. "Uncle Jeremiah is your mama's big brother, and Aunt Frances is his wife. Would you say how-do to Aunt Frances for me?"

"How-do Aunt F'ances," muttered Gabe, but his eyes were still enormous and his expression guarded. He closed his hand around the edge of Cullen's watered-silk vest. Jeb, awake at last, raised his head sleepily. His ears perked at the sight of the visitors, and then relaxed when he saw his master nearby. He laid his chin back down on his paws again.

"How do you do, Gabriel," said Jeremiah gravely. "I can see you're a fine little man."

"The finest," said Cullen, completely disregarding the rule that parents ought not to boast of their own children. "Gabe already has a fine seat on horseback, and he knows his numbers all the way to eleven, and he's a mighty explorer, too. Ain't you, son?"

Gabe grinned up at him, his reticence forgotten as he spoke to his father. "I founded de tobacco!" he announced proudly. "An' them poles."

"Poles?" Frances echoed in puzzlement. Then she smiled thinly. "He's a very handsome boy, Mary. You must be very proud. Henry and Julian send their love, of course, but they couldn't possibly be spared from their studies. Education is so very important to a gentleman, you know."

"Yes, of course," said Mary. There was a distant rattling noise and the buckboard came into sight, Nate drawing in the reins to turn the mules towards the back of the house. "Here comes Nate with the wagon; he'll bring your trunks up to your room while we refresh ourselves. Do please come inside."

The refreshments were simple: ginger water made fresh from the well for the ladies and Gabe, and whiskey for Cullen and Jeremiah, with little dishes of peach preserves. Cullen took his restlessly, his eyes straying again and again towards the door. Mary knew that he was anxious to get out to the tobacco barn to see how Meg and Elijah had fared in his absence, but he could hardly excuse himself until the guests had retired upstairs to remove their travel clothes.

There was a series of loud _thumps_ from the front entryway, and Frances startled. "Dear me, your man _is_ making a dreadful racket," she said.

"Ain't easy carrying a loaded steamer trunk without help," Cullen said with a courteous but insincere smile.

Mary, who was sitting on the récamier with Gabe in her lap, dabbed at her boy's chin with a corner of her handkerchief as a little peach syrup dribbled from his spoon. "Tell me, Frances, how is your sister? I understand you sojourned first in Philadelphia?"

"She's well," said Frances. "Worn out with campaign suppers, of course. Her husband is running for the State Senate in the upcoming election."

"Let's not talk politics now, my dear," said Jeremiah, admiring the color of his whiskey before he took another swallow. "We're tired from the journey and I'm sure Mary would be more interested in news about the boys."

Mary declared that she would like nothing better to know how her nephews were faring, and the next few minutes passed in a tally of school reports, academic achievements, and sporting prowess. Cullen shifted restlessly, but gave every other appearance of enraptured interest. Finally a quiet knock sounded on the parlor door.

"Come in!" Cullen exclaimed, rather too loudly. Missy looked at him in some alarm, and Gabe, who had been beginning to doze against Mary's arm, sat up and grinned instinctively at the sound of his father's voice.

Bethel opened the door, remaining respectfully on the threshold with her hands folded over her best apron and her eyes lowered in the posture she always assumed with guests. "Your pardon, Mist' Cullen, Missus Mary," she said; "but the trunks is upstairs an' I got soap an' warm water all ready for washin', if Mist' an' Missus Tate care to tidy up aft' their journey."

"Thank you, Bethel," Mary said with a smile. "Would you show them up, please? Jeremiah, Frances, Bethel will take care of you."

Frances got to her feet as quickly as propriety allowed, and Jeremiah drained his glass. He looked suddenly uncomfortable, and his color was high. Mary wondered again what had possessed him to come. But in another minute they were out of the room, Missy trailing behind, and Cullen watched the ceiling as he listened for their footsteps moving into the front bedroom, followed by Missy's lighter tread passing into the nursery, and finally Bethel's familiar steps on the stairs again.

"I got to get out there," Cullen said hurriedly, getting to his feet and wriggling out of his frock coat. He flung it over one elbow and started to unbutton his waistcoat as he moved to the door. "You know whether Elijah's laid them fires yet?"

"He ain't," said Nate from the doorway. Mary had not even seen him standing there in the midafternoon shadows. "He been fixin' that loose board on the henhouse fence. Said he figured you'd want to see that done youself."

"He figured right," said Cullen. "I'll meet you out back in five minutes and we'll unload them barrels, then I want Lottie to meet us down at the tobacco barn: I got to make sure she remembers what to do."

"She remember," said Nate. "That girl gots a heap of sense."

He moved off, footsteps heavy once more, and Cullen pulled off his cravat. He looked apologetically at Mary. "I'm sorry to leave you," he said. "You goin' manage all right in here?"

"Of course I will," she said with her brightest smile. "Will you be in for supper?"

He grimaced as though the question pained him. "Mary, you know I can't. Minute I get them fires laid we'll be back to picking. Couldn't be a worse time for visitors."

"I know," said Mary. "You take care in that heat. Will it ever cool off?"

"Longer it stays like this, the faster the tobacco dries," Cullen said. He shrugged grimly. "But if we don't get rain sometime the middle leaves is going to stop growing before they're full-sized. I keep hoping for a thunderstorm."

"I likes dunderstorms," Gabe put in conversationally. He had been looking from one parent to the next as they spoke, still unusually subdued by the presence of strangers in the house. It had not occurred to Mary before this, but the little boy had very little contact with people beyond his own household. He must be startled to find his home suddenly overrun.

Cullen gestured helplessly, the cravat fluttering from his fingers. "Mary, I got to…"

"Go," she said again, with all the reassurance she could offer. "Gabe and I will manage beautifully with the company."

Gabe did not look convinced, but Cullen's face softened in relief as he hurried from the room.

_*discidium*_

Lottie watched from the crack between the ajar door to the dining room and its post as Missus Bohannon's brother and his wife came out of the parlor and went upstairs after Bethel. She was surprised. She had never seen a Yankee before except for her mistress, and she had been expecting a very tall man with a hooked nose and a powdered wig like the ones in the book about the Declaration of Independence on the parlor shelf. Instead she saw a man who wasn't even as tall as Mister Cullen, and who was also a little bit fat. He had a gingery mustache and he wore a rumpled, dusty-looking grey suit. His wife wasn't any more remarkable. She was pale and rabbity like a Cracker, and her dress wasn't pressed and her gloves weren't clean. Even more extraordinary was that her face was dirty! Lottie could see the pink, clean skin behind her ears and just under the collar of her dress, but the rest of her face and neck was powdered with a fine layer of soot. The way her ma and Bethel had talked, Lottie had expected a grand lady in rustling silks whose every wish had to be immediately fulfilled lest she whither from neglect. Instead she just looked cheap and tacky next to Missus Bohannon in her lovely purple dress, with her ribboned auburn hair and her beautiful, gentle face. Lottie felt fiercely proud of her mistress. She was the kindest and most wonderful lady in the county, and she was prettier than that other Yankee, too!

After the disappointment of her imaginings, Lottie had scarcely looked at the little girl except to notice she was blonde and that she was wearing a great many petticoats that made her skirts stand out in a bell and showed their lacy ruffles beneath. Lottie didn't own a petticoat for summer wear; only the warm flannelette one she wore on cold days. But she was going to have a new dress just as soon as Missus Bohannon finished sewing the buttonholes for her, and Lottie guessed that meant she had nothing to be ashamed of. Mostly nigger girls wore old handed-down clothes that belonged to older girls, and the older girls wore the cut-down dresses of the slave women. Over at Hartwood the girls' dresses didn't hardly seem to cover them at all, and they were ragged and tattered. Mister Sutcliffe didn't believe in keeping his slaves decently dressed, Pa said, on 'count of the expense. Even on Mister Ainsley's place where the darkies had good clothes the girls Lottie's age never got new dresses all their own, and certainly not dresses made from the mistress's clothes. Only ladies' maids and head women got the mistress's dresses.

Lottie swelled with pride at that though. Missus Bohannon thought well enough of her, and of the work she did in the house and the garden, and of the way she played so nicely with Mister Gabe, that she was making her a real grown-up housegirl's dress. It had real cuffs that would have two buttons to fasten them, and a good full skirt pleated into the body. It even had a ruffle 'round the bottom, which Missus Bohannon had sewed onto the edge of the skirt with her wondrous patented New York sewing machine. Best of all, it didn't button up the back like a child's dress, but down the front like a woman's. Lottie wouldn't have to struggle to reach that troublesome buttonhole right in the middle of her back anymore, and she would have a row of neat buttons to look at whenever she wanted to. And Missus Bohannon had said that because it fastened in front Lottie would need a collar for the dress, and she thought she could make a pretty one out of a bit of starched muslin. This was almost more than Lottie could hope for.

Mister Cullen was talking now, hurriedly and apologetically, and Lottie abandoned her post behind the door. Ma told her time and again not to listen when the master and mistress were talking privately together. Once Lottie had argued that Bethel did it, and her mother had rapped her knuckles with a fork.

"That be diff'ent!" she had said. "Bethel be Massa's mammy, an' she always goin' watch out for him. But if you wants to grow up to be a good house servant, you gots to min' your own business when Massa an' Missus is talkin'. You got to be a well-behavin' chile when I ain't 'round to watch you. Mist' Cullen been good to us, keepin' us on when what he need is 'nother man, an' we gots to act right an' work hard to pay him back!"

Lottie didn't understand quite what her mother meant; surely she wasn't suggesting that Mister Cullen would ever sell them just to buy some old field hand? Lots of white men did things like that, maybe, but not Mister Cullen. All Lottie's life she had admired her master, even when he was only the Young Master, and old Mister Bohannon was still alive. Then some of the slaves, the old ones who were dead now, had said Mister Cullen was just a no-good wild thing and wouldn't ever come to much. Lottie thought she remembered Elijah saying the same thing, but she wasn't sure. Maybe that was just a dream, because Elijah admired the master and respected him for trying so hard to keep everyone fed and clothed and together. Times were hard: Lottie was old enough to see that. But Mister Cullen kept right on trying.

In the old days he _had_ been a bit wild, maybe: tearing around on his hunter in the dead of night and waking folks that needed their sleep, and coming into the house drunk in the early morning hours, and sometimes staying away for two or three days at a time. But he would always come back, and he would always sober up, and he had always had peppermint candy in his pocket for Lottie. She guessed she hadn't been much older than Gabe, but she remembered he would come out of the kitchen on dewy mornings when she was helping Ma feed the chickens, and he would sit down on the stoop with his riding boots planted wide.

"Here now, Lottie!" he would call, and she would run to him, standing just out of his reach with one bare foot up on top of the other and her hands behind her back. He would grin at her and his eyes, often red and puffy after the night's exertions, would twinkle merrily. "You been a good girl?" he would ask her.

"Yes, Massa," she used to say, and then he would reach into the pocket of his waistcoat and bring out a peppermint drop, and she would grab it shyly and retreat to her ma's skirts.

Then Ma would say; "You thank Mist' Bohannon now, Lottie." And Lottie would mumble her thanks. Then the smiling young man would get to his feet and give her ma good day and stride off towards the stable.

It had just about broken Lottie's five-year-old heart when he had gone away. She hadn't understood then that he would only be gone a season or two, or that he would come home a married man with a wife as pretty as she was kind, or that they would have them a little boy that sometimes Lottie loved so much she wished he was a little _black_ boy and her own baby brother. She knew that was a sin, to wish Missus Bohannon's baby belonged to her ma instead. And anyway this was just as good, or nearly. But Lottie wished that _somebody_ on the plantation would have another baby; a little girl baby. White or black, it didn't matter, but she would dearly love to help take care of a baby.

She wandered through the kitchen and out onto the stoop. Elijah had been mending the henhouse, and now he was giving the mules handfuls of corn from the sack of chicken-feed. He muttered something to Gus, who brayed irritably and butted his hand. Lottie didn't like Gus. She preferred Betsy, and she liked Shadow most. Nobody liked Snort, especially not Mister Cullen. Snort was stubborn and balky, and he liked to smack unwary people with the side of his head. If he wasn't so strong and tireless, the master declared, he would have shot him for glue last spring. Lottie had learned all of her best oaths listening to Mister Cullen shout at and about Snort.

The trunks and cases had been unloaded from the wagon, but there were three barrels still in the back. One was flour: Lottie knew that because Missus Bohannon and Bethel had talked of almost nothing else when planning meals to serve the guests. Missus Bohannon just didn't understand why she couldn't serve corn pone, since that was what the family had been eating for weeks now, and Bethel kept trying to explain that it wasn't fitting. Every time she said that – that something wasn't fitting for white folks to eat or have or do – Lottie wondered if that was what she really meant. Because the way she looked sometimes, it seemed like what Bethel was really saying was that she didn't much care what other white folks did, but she didn't want _Mister Cullen_ making do with this or managing without that or wearing himself thin doing the work of two field hands. Of course Lottie never said this. Little black girls who questioned Bethel generally got a swift swat on the bottom with a wooden spoon.

"Wha's in them barrels?" she asked, planting her hands on the back of the wagon and putting her weight onto them so that she could kick both feet up off the ground. It was more fun than she had expected, and so she did it again.

"Flour," said Elijah. He shook his head. "Buyin' flour on account got to hurt a man's pride."

"What use we got for three barrels of flour?" asked Lottie. She didn't understand what _on account_ was, but it had something to do with town business and therefore didn't concern her at all. "Tobacco's almos' in: Mist' Cullen can buy flour then."

"On'y that one's flour. Got one barrel apples, an' one barrel gewgaws from Missus Mary's family in New York," said Elijah. "What you doin' lollygagging 'round out here?"

Lottie was about to answer when Nate came out of the house. He nodded at the barrels. "Think you can give me a han'?" he asked Elijah. "Massa jus' changin' out his good clothes, then he goin' set them fires. You was right: he wan' to do it hisself."

"An' why not?" said Elijah. "He might be still learnin' some things, but he can lay a good fire. You bes' hang 'round, girl: he goin' want you tendin' them."

"Yassir!" Lottie said, her chest puffing a little. Last year she had been given the all-important task of keeping the fires in the tobacco barn smoldering through the day. The grown folks took shifts through the night, but it was Lottie the master relied upon to feed them with chips and bank them with split logs so that they burned neither too quickly nor too slow during the day. The smoke and the heat had to be just right, and perfectly steady, so that the tobacco would cure properly and fetch a good price. Most important of all, someone had to be on hand at all times lest a stray spark should fly up and ignite the hanging tobacco, destroying weeks of work and pounds and pounds of produce and maybe the barn itself. Tending those fires was a position of supreme trust, and Lottie undertook it gravely.

She hurried out of the way while Nate climbed into the back of the wagon and upended a barrel. He rolled it near the edge and then hopped down, taking hold of one end while Elijah took the other. It was large, but did not seem to be filled with anything too heavy. They carried it around to the hatch of the root cellar where Lottie could not see them. She wandered around to the front of the wagon and stroked Betsy's nose. Jealous, Gus nudged at her shoulder, and so she petted him too. Nate and Elijah returned and took down the next barrel. This one was larger and heavier, and Elijah's end hung lower than Nate's as they trundled it up onto the stoop. They had just set it down when the master came out of the house, buttoning the front of his stained shirt.

He froze for a moment, looking at the two men. "I said…" he began, then shook his head. He sat down on the bench and rammed his feet into his heavy work boots. He stamped to settle his heels, then strode to the buckboard and hopped up onto the back. "Nate."

The last barrel was definitely flour. It was heavy enough that it took the coordinated effort of both men to tip it and ease it gently onto its side. They both grunted, low but audibly, as they hoisted it down, and they shuffled around the corner of the house. As soon as the wagon was empty, Elijah led the mules away. Left alone, Lottie straightened her tightly curling pigtails. She was glad her new dress wasn't ready yet. She didn't want it to get all sooty and smelling of smoke as she minded the fires. She decided she would wear her old dress to do that, just the same as Missus Bohannon wore her old dresses to work in the garden or wash the clothes. That thought made her feel very grown up indeed.

_*discidium*_

Mary nodded her thanks as Bethel moved to the sideboard and set down the large china platter with the roasted chicken glistening enticingly upon it. The older woman gave her a tiny smile and withdrew from the room. The sun was setting in carmine glory beyond the open windows, but it would be a long while yet before it grew too dark to see. Cullen would not quit a minute before he was forced to, chasing the demon of the lost afternoon with the zeal of the desperate. The air was cooling, and faint upon it came the scent of wood smoke from the tobacco kiln. The smell would persist now until the crop was brought in and cured to the very last leaf. It was not an unpleasant aroma, nor was it very strong, but Mary was attuned to the air of the plantation and the change was obvious to her.

To Jeremiah and Frances it was doubtless just another unfamiliar sensation in an unfamiliar place. Frances, especially, seemed quite out of her depth. Though at times she found her sister-in-law frustrating and a little foolish, Mary felt sorry for her. She remembered her own early days in Mississippi, shocked by strange sights and smells and the heavy, indolent feeling of the air that was so different from the crisp winds off the mid-Atlantic. At least Mary had had Cullen to guide her through the labyrinth of peculiar experiences that were perfectly natural to him. Jeremiah was no more acquainted with the South than his wife.

"Would you please carve, Jeremiah?" Mary asked, gesturing to the sideboard where the knife and prong lay waiting.

"Me?" said Jeremiah, somewhat startled. "I thought… well, isn't there a valet or someone who is supposed to… a butler? Would you call it a butler?"

He flushed again, as he seemed to be doing every time the slaves were mentioned even in passing. It was so unlike him, and it struck the softness of Mary's heart. He was trying so hard to accept a situation that he must surely find untenable, so as not to give offence to her husband or to raise a rift between them. Before her marriage and immediately after, Cullen and Jeremiah had engaged in several biting debates on the very questions of philosophy, morality and economics that were rending Congress and the Senate apart. These debates had degenerated swiftly into quarrels, and then into pitched battles of will that very well might have come to blows if not for the presence of the ladies. Then, at least, they had not been in one another's homes. If such a scene could be avoided this time Mary would be grateful.

"No," she said serenely; "it is the custom for the gentleman to carve, except at very large gatherings where one person could not possibly serve everyone in a timely fashion."

"Oh. Of course, then. Yes, yes I would be happy to carve." Jeremiah got to his feet and moved to the sideboard, adjusting the lamp in its wall bracket. The room was more brightly lit than it had been in a year: all the wall lamps were lit, and the best lamp stood in the middle of the table flanked by the last two beeswax candles. Mary had been saving them for Christmas, in case there should not be enough of the harvest money left over after purchasing necessities to buy more, but the occasion demanded the utmost hospitality the house could offer. She tried not to think about the prodigal outpouring of kerosene. It could not be helped.

"Frances, what was it you were saying about Henry?" Mary asked. They had spent most of the afternoon talking about the boys, while Missy sat quietly in a corner of the parlor, tired out from her journey. Gabe had planted himself upon the hearthrug in the lee of Mary's skirts, playing quietly but keeping one uneasy eye on the guests at all times.

"He's been accepted to Foxcroft Academy for the winter term," said Frances. "It's a very good school: it will be such excellent preparation for university. Where will you send your dear little boy to school, Mary?"

The question was innocent enough, but the tone was almost too guileless. Mary smiled. "I shall be teaching him at home for at least another year," she said. "He has been learning his letters and his numbers."

"All the way to eleven!" Jeremiah said cheerfully, coming back to the table with the ladies' plates. He set them down and went to fill his own.

"And then?" asked Frances.

"Our nearest neighbors to the east have an accomplished governess, and have invited him to study with their children," Mary said, filling her sister-in-law's plate with potatoes and greens, creamed carrots and fresh buttered peas and Bethel's spiced succotash. "They have a little boy who is six, and another just a few months younger than Gabe. Their eldest daughter is only a little older than Missy; I thought perhaps you and I might take the children to call one day this week."

"That would be very pleasant, I'm sure," said Frances. Jeremiah sat down and started to help himself to the other dishes.

"You can't send him to a neighbor's governess forever, you know, Mary," he said. "Sooner or later he needs to start being schooled by men."

"There's a school in Meridian," said Mary. "It's only six miles, and the present schoolmaster attended Cullen's university."

"That's right: he did get a little formal education, didn't he?" said Jeremiah. "Pity he doesn't use it."

"I believe the point of a well-rounded education is that one always uses it," said Mary; "whether or not one does so in a quantifiable manner. Education is meant to enhance the quality and depth of one's consideration of the world."

Jeremiah chuckled and patted her hand. "My sweet sister, always putting everything so prettily!" he said. His eyes softened and he looked almost sad. "Perhaps a little too prettily. It's easy to see only the pretty things in life, and to ignore more uncomfortable truths."

Frances cleared her throat delicately and took another small morsel of chicken from the tip of her fork. "We did promise to give Mary all the news from home," she said.

"Indeed we did!" exclaimed Jeremiah, cheering considerably. "Well, my dear, the girls miss you dreadfully. They just cannot understand why you couldn't pick up and come to visit. Silly geese: they'd never make that journey with a little boy! Imagine taking a child that age on a steamboat: it would be absolutely wretched. Our Missy is no coward, but even she was distressed by all the noise and commotion. Anyhow, Emily asked me to tell you…"

And so the meal passed, Mary listening eagerly to news of her sisters and her parents and her eldest brother. Jeremiah talked ebulliently, Frances cutting in now and then with some quiet comment. But when the peach tart was served and the coffee finished, the Tates retired to bed at once, exhausted from their journey. Mary saw them up the stairs, and looked in on Missy in the nursery. She was fast asleep, of course: overtaxed by the excitement and the heat. Gabe was slumbering peacefully in the middle of his parents' big bed, moonlight playing on his face. Mary watched him for a while until the rustling in the front bedroom quieted. Then she hurried down to the kitchen on silent feet.

_*discidium*_

There was something that man wasn't saying, and Bethel didn't like it.

She had been quietly observing the visitors all afternoon, watching their expressions and their movements, listening to Missus Mary's brother carefully, and trying to make sense of what Missus Tate was saying in her outlandish twanging accent. While they had been supping, Bethel had been sitting just on the other side of the door, left slightly ajar so that she could hear every word. If Missus Mary had noticed she hadn't done anything about it, and since Missus Mary was no fool Bethel thought that meant she wanted to know that she had someone on her side even with Mister Cullen out working.

She certainly needed someone. That woman wasn't well-bred in the least: not what Bethel thought of as well-bred. Couching criticism in innocent questions was a skill elevated to art by the matrons of the South, but Bethel thought it was mighty ill-bred in them, too. Her standard of breeding had been set by Miss Caroline, and Miss Caroline would never have asked such pointed things about Mister Gabe's schooling. She _certainly_ never would have been so crass as to remark that the dress Missus Mary was wearing was behind the fashion. But it wasn't Missus Tate who worried Bethel: the artfully rude were common as crabgrass, and Missus Mary was gracious enough to handle them on her own.

No, it was the man who made Bethel uncomfortable. Whatever it was he wasn't saying, he was thinking it all the time and it kept coming out in his words. There was a lilt in his voice whenever he called Missus Mary "sister", and his voice kept trailing off halfway through a sentence. Bethel knew that he was an abolitionist, which meant he thought the slaves ought to be freed – as if a white man who had never been a slave nor owned one nor likely ever met one before today had any right to have an opinion of the matter – but he didn't even really realize they were people. He hadn't hardly even looked at Bethel when she had shown him up the stairs, much less thanked her; just followed her like she was a signpost on an empty road. And complaining about the noise Nate made on the stairs, carrying those heavy cases on his own so Elijah wouldn't strain… it just wasn't decent. But although he certainly was making an effort not to lecture Missus Mary about the Negroes, Bethel didn't think that a desire to do so was what Mister Tate was hiding. Mostly because he didn't have to hide it: his sister knew he must want to, Mister Cullen knew, everyone on the place except maybe the children knew.

And that was strange, too. Bethel had never heard tell of an abolitionist rabid enough to tear into a man about his slaves at his wedding visiting a house that kept them. It just didn't make sense. Why was he here, and what did he want?

The door from the dining room opened hastily and Missus Mary came in. She looked pretty and flushed: that gown suited her beautifully, whether or not New England women still wore such things. She was smiling.

"I think that went off wonderfully," she said. "The chicken was perfectly done, and Jeremiah took three helpings of the greens. And the potatoes… Bethel, they were perfect."

Bethel nodded. It worried her that Missus Mary did not seem to share her concern. She supposed it was natural enough: Mister Tate was her older brother, and she had grown up trusting him. She wouldn't very well look askance when he seemed to be trying to be on his best behavior. On the other hand, Bethel supposed, perhaps she was the one who was mistaken. Missus Mary knew her brother better than Bethel did. And yet… the way his voice changed when he called her "sister" just did not sit right.

"Did you save something nice for Cullen?" the young woman asked, coming out of her eager delight with a little frown of worry.

"Bes' taste of everything 'cept the chicken," said Bethel. "An' I gots the bes' part of what's left of her." She nodded at the covered plate perched on the warming shelf, then reached to pat Mary's hand. "You done right," she murmured. "He wan' you to be the lady of the house. It helpin' him do what he got do out there."

"I know." The words were very soft, and Missus Mary was no longer looking at Bethel, but down at the stovetop. "He's late," she said.

"Pro'ly gone to see to the stock so he don' have to go out again," Bethel reassured her. The mistress nodded and moved to pick up one of the dishcloths. "No you don'!" scolded Bethel. "Not in that dress! Anyways you promised me an' Mist' Cullen both to keep you' hands idle 'til they's gone."

Missus Mary's eyes flashed, an echo of her husband's fire, and then she made a little chagrined smile. "I did, didn't I?" she asked.

Then both women froze at the sound of a heavy boot on the stoop. Bethel waited, expecting the creak of the bench as Mister Cullen sat down to haul them off. Instead the door swung open and he appeared, half-shadowed and leaning on the post.

"I do love you in that dress," he said quietly, nodding at Missus Mary.

She blushed like a maiden and rocked her hips ever so slightly. The hoop swung and the flounces whispered.

"How was supper?" Cullen asked. "Not too awkward, I hope? Unbalanced table."

"It was lovely," said Mary. "I heard all the news from home."

"Get them boots off an' come sit down," Bethel said, pouring a cup of coffee. She had made it fresh at suppertime, and it would not be as bitter as the evening brew usually was. She was glad. That and the chicken and the soft white rolls and the tart would be such a nice treat for him.

But he made no move to take off his boots. Keeping his feet outside of the house he reached around to wet his hands in the washbasin, scooped some soap and scrubbed. His hands looked like they had been dipped in tobacco tar, and it came off in runny strings as he washed. Finally he rubbed vigorously with the old towel and blotted at his beard.

"I just come back for a bite to eat," he said. "I'm taking the first watch on the fires tonight. I don't want neither of you sitting up for me."

"The fires," murmured Missus Mary. She looked stricken, as if she had forgotten about the need to tend the tobacco kiln through the night. In the past it had been the duty of one of the elderly darkies, too aged to be of any use during the day and spared the sheriff's sale for the same reason. Since the last of the old timers had died the field hands had been taking it in turns through the night with Mister Cullen: four shifts, the first and the last dragging out an already long workday, and the middle two cruelly cleaving the night into a pair of short, snatched rests. And of course there had been no respite from the rotating roster. By the end of curing time last year, all four of them had been stumbling about the place like graveyard haunts; ashen, sunken-eyed and indifferent to everything but sleep. Bethel privately wondered whether this exhaustion had harmed Mister Cullen's chances of wrangling a good price in New Orleans.

"We're trying it differently this year," he said, as though he knew what she was thinking. "Three shifts a night, everyone gets a night off in four. Whoever has the last watch gets a pass from tending the stock to have a decent breakfast. Up here, Bethel: Meg ain't going to have time for cooking."

"I 'spects that bes'," she agreed. "An' not jus' breakfast, neither. I can fix supper for everyone, an' Meg can take it down the cabins when she done her work."

He tilted his chin in agreement, and Missus Mary nodded. It only made sense: everything but the slaves' meat and pone had been cooked in the house kitchen for weeks. Bethel took the plate off of the warmer and moved towards the table. "You come sit," she said. "Never min' them boots."

Mister Cullen shook his head. "Just put it on a tin plate: I'll take it with me," he said. "I already sent Lottie to her supper: I got to get back."

Bethel turned to do as she was told, and Missus Mary took the cup of coffee. She went to the dish dresser and plucked the lid off the sugar bowl. Mister Cullen made an abortive noise of protest before he remembered that he wanted to shelter her from the secret about the sorghum. She stirred in a spoonful of the costly white grains and offered it to him with a small smile. He saluted her with the cup and drank.

"Don't you come no closer," he said hurriedly as she moved as though to touch him. "You spoil _that _dress and I'll never forgive myself."

Bethel had the tin plate ready now. She put two rolls onto it and the rest of the pat of butter, and balanced the slice of peach tart carefully on its rim, then picked up a knife and a fork from the pile she had just finished washing. These Mister Cullen stowed in his trouser pocket: he had changed out of his oilskins already. He took the plate and shifted as though to push off the doorjamb, but his resolve crumbled and he reached with thumb and forefinger to pick up a slender hunk of richly basted dark meat. Transfixed he tore into it with his teeth, closing his eyes and chewing in slow relish. He popped the rest of the now-ragged piece into his mouth, swallowed, and then licked the grease from his blackened fingertips. He opened his eyes, saw the two women watching him wordlessly, and offered a sheepish grin.

"Can't remember when I've had chicken that good," he said cheerfully. Then he was gone.


	27. Strangers

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: Strangers**

Gabe woke up to the disappointing discovery that his parents were already up for the day. When Mama had put him down for the night in the middle of the big bed, Gabe had intended not to fall asleep until they came up to join him. He had wanted to cuddle between his mama and his pappy, warm and safe and contented after a long and anxious afternoon. But when he opened his eyes he found he was alone. Mama's side of the bed was still warm, but Pappy's had long gone cold, and there was no one else in the bedroom with him. He sat up, throwing off the covers that someone had spread smoothly over him, and crooked his knees. He thumped one foot against the mattress, listening to the crackle of packed straw beneath the ticking. It was a funny sound, and so he did it again. Then he got onto his knees and bounced down to the edge of the bed. His legs dangled down over the side, bare feet swinging. The curtains fluttered with a gentle breeze: it was not so hot today.

He hesitated before hopping down off the bed. He wasn't sure he wanted to go out into the corridor all by himself. There were strangers in the house, and Gabe was not sure he liked strangers. Mama said they were his Uncle Jeremiah and his Auntie Frances, and the girl was his Cousin Missy, but Gabe didn't care who they were: he didn't know them and they made him uncomfortable. Auntie Frances wasn't kind and smiling and sweet like Mama, and he didn't like the way that Uncle Jeremiah didn't have whiskers anywhere but on his lip. Why did they grow like that? Gabe hadn't asked, because he was wary of talking to the unfamiliar adult. He didn't often see anyone but his own folks, and on the rare occasions when there were visitors at the house they were people Gabe knew: Mr. and Mrs. Ainsley and their children, or quiet and kindly Doctor Whitehead. They didn't stay the night, either: they went home before it got dark!

Gabe knew he shouldn't be afraid, because he was a little man now and too old to be frightened. And he knew his mama wasn't afraid: she was very happy, and had smiled and smiled all afternoon as she dressed him in his slippery suit and told him to mind his manners and greeted the guests and took them into the parlor. Mama thought it was wonderful to have these strangers in the house: Gabe could see that. Still he wished his pappy didn't have to be out in the tobacco. He would have felt safer with Pappy in the house.

He slipped off the edge of the bed, his feet hitting the floor together. He padded around the edge of the bed and clung to the post of the footboard, peering around at the closed bedroom door. Working up his courage, he approached it, reached up with both arms so he could grip the handle, and pulled it open. It moved silently on the well-greased hinges, and he peered out into the hallway.

The nursery door was closed. The strange girl was sleeping in Gabe's bed. He didn't mind that so much: the treat of sleeping between Mama and Pappy more than made up for the displacement. But he didn't know if he liked the girl, and that perplexed him. Gabe had always got along well with other children: with Lottie and with Charity, Charlie, Leon and Daisy Ainsley, and even with the strange children he had met once when Mama and Pappy had gone visiting at Eastertime. It was easy to get along with children: they talked to you, or you talked to them, or if they were too little to talk sometimes they handed you a toy or tried to grab your shirt-buttons, and then you were friends. But Cousin Missy hadn't talked to him, and when he tried to talk to her she had just giggled and shushed him and watched the talking adults instead. Gabe hadn't said anything funny, and he didn't like to be laughed at. Maybe he only got along with Mississippi children.

It was morning, and Mama would be downstairs setting the table for breakfast. Gabe could smell it cooking: ham and eggs and grits biscuits and something else, too. Something sweet. Gabe smacked his lips quietly. He was hungry. He hadn't eaten much at supper, because instead of sitting at the dining room table with only Mama for company he had been put down opposite Missy, with Auntie Frances on one side and his mother on the other while Uncle Jeremiah sat in a chair by the window and puffed on a fat cigar. Gabe had been uncomfortable with all the unfamiliar eyes upon him, and the effort of trying to put on his best manners had been exhausting after a day without a nap. He had been glad when Mama suggested it was time for bed, and had carried him upstairs to the safety of her bedroom where the strangers wouldn't come. She had dressed him in his nightshirt and brushed his hair with her soft brush and sat beside the bed singing softly until he fell asleep.

He remembered that now, and it made him grin. Mama was sneaky: she had tricked him into falling asleep when he hadn't meant to. Tonight he wouldn't let her do that, and he would stay up until she and Pappy came to bed.

Gabe slipped out into the corridor and moved quietly past the nursery door. The door to the other bedroom, which stood near the head of the stairs, was closed. Beyond it he could hear sounds of slow, heavy breathing, and he knew that Uncle Jeremiah was still sleeping. Mama had said that long journeys were tiring and the guests would need their rest. Gabe didn't want to disturb them anyhow. He preferred them fast asleep.

He grabbed hold of the bannister and stepped down onto the first step, trying to be as quiet as possible. He descended to the second and was just stretching his foot towards the third when Mama appeared at the foot of the stairs. She was wearing another one of her pretty dresses over the big hoop: this one the dark blue-and-grey tartan that Pappy said made her eyes sparkle like the sea. They were certainly sparkling now as she saw him, and she came hurriedly up the stairs, bending to tug at the hem of his nightshirt, which had rucked up over his bottom when he slid out of bed.

"There, dearest, now you're decent," she said, taking his hand and turning him around to head back up the stairs. "We'll just get you dressed and then you can have some breakfast. Bethel's made a special treat."

The treat was an apple pastry, sweet and sticky and scrumptious. Gabe sat at the kitchen able and ate happily while Bethel kept breakfast warm for the grown folks. Upstairs he could hear people moving around now: Uncle Jeremiah and Auntie Frances getting ready for the day. Mama went back into the dining room to make sure that everything was ready, and Gabe was left alone with Bethel.

"When dey goin' home?" Gabe asked, licking his stick fingers.

Bethel turned away from stirring butter into the hominy. "Wha's that, honey?" she asked.

"Dem guests. When dey goin' home?"

The loving black face crinkled into a fond smile. "Not fo' a while yet, Mist' Gabe. They's stayin' two weeks."

"Why?" he asked.

Bethel shook her head. "I don' know," she said. "Mebbe on 'count of the journey so long. Mebbe 'cause Mist' Tate miss your mama. I don' even understand why they's come in the firs' place."

"Uncle Jeremiah is Mama's brother," said Gabe. He frowned thoughtfully. "How come I don't got a brother?"

The smile faltered a little and Bethel put down her wooden spoon. She came around the table and stood beside him, stroking his hair. Gabe craned his neck to look up at her. "The Lord is the one who decides when you gets a brother," she said. "Sometime he jus' don' mean for it to be."

There were voices in the next room now, and Bethel hurried back to the stove. She spooned the hominy into a china serving dish and piled the slices of ham onto a plate. Gabe returned his attention to his breakfast, chasing bits of egg with his fork. He was pleased that he didn't have to eat with the company. It was nicer in here with Bethel: it was more like things were supposed to be.

Bethel made several trips into the dining room, and on the last one Mama said something to her and she came back into the kitchen nodding. She wetted a cloth and wiped Gabe's face and hands. "I goin' upstairs to make them beds," she said. "You wan' come with me, or you wan' go sit nicely at the table like a gentleman an' keep your mama company?"

"Wid you!" Gabe declared. Then, remembering Mama's instructions to use his very best manners he added; "Please."

Bethel made the bed in Mama and Pappy's room first, and Gabe sat on the chair in the corner, swinging his legs while he watched. Bethel worked quickly and efficiently, even though she and Mama usually made the big bed together. She picked up Pappy's nightshirt where it lay crumpled by the clothes press, and smoothed and folded it before tucking it under his pillow. She straightened the rag rugs on either side of the bed, and trimmed the wick of the candle on Mama's little table. From the closet she took a willow-twig broom and made a quick sweep of the room. Later, when the breakfast dishes were washed, she would come up to change the water in the washstand and take out the chamber pot to be emptied. Those were the bedroom chores.

The same process was repeated in the guest's room, only Gabe did not go in. He hovered just outside, peeking through the door. The room was very clean and Mama's new curtains looked very pretty, but the big alien trunks and the portmanteaux, the overcoat hanging on one of the closet hooks and the unfamiliar gowns airing on the chair and the clothespress made Gabe feel uneasy. It was as if this ordinarily quiet corner of the house had been invaded, and the strangers were making it their own. They had ever chased Mama's sewing machine right down the stairs!

The creak of the nursery door made him turn around. Cousin Missy was peering out into the hall just as Gabe himself had done an hour earlier. Her pale hair was tousled and her lace-trimmed nightgown was rumpled and limp-looking after the warm night. There were bright blossoms of color on her cheeks and there was something about her expression as she looked wide-eyed into the unfamiliar corridor that reminded Gabe of his mama. Suddenly he did not feel so disinclined to like her, and he smiled.

"Good mornin'," he said generously. "Is you goin' get dressed? Bet'l made a treat for breakfast, an' she saved you some."

Missy looked at him for a moment, then tittered. "Why do you speak like that?" she asked.

Gabe didn't understand the question. He was speaking politely, just like Mama had taught him. Maybe he shouldn't have said that part about her getting dressed? But he had heard Pappy ask Mama such things before, and Pappy was a gentleman, so it must be all right. "She made it wid dem apples your pappy brung," he said.

"_Brought_," said Missy. "My father _brought_. And you don't say 'with them apples'; you say 'with those apples'."

"I like apples," said Gabe, trying to keep the conversation going although what she said made very little sense. Of course her father brung them apples: hadn't he just said that? He tried not to frown, but he could not help thinking that _Lottie_ would know just what he meant. "We ain't got no trees dat grow 'em. We got peaches an' walnuts."

The girl laughed again. "You sound so _funny_!" she said.

Gabe scowled indignantly. "I don'!" he protested. "I don' soun' funny! You sounds funny!"

He felt a warm breeze as Bethel's skirts swished up behind him, and her gentle, work-roughened hand settled on the crown of his head. He shuffled closer to her, triumphant. That Yankee girl wasn't going to laugh at him now that Bethel was here: Bethel wouldn't let her.

The smile was gone from Missy's face, and she was clutching the edge of the door as she stared at the woman. Bethel smiled. "Mornin' Miss Missy," she said kindly, stepping around Gabe and drawing him with her. "You wan' me to help you get brushed an' dressed? I kin fix your hair up right pretty fo' breakfas'."

_*discidium*_

Lottie stood up hurriedly as Cullen stepped into the thick, smoky air of the tobacco kiln. The fires were glowing a lurid orange, their embers smoldering at just the right rate. The pile of wood chips and the logs with which the girl had been feeding the fires all day were dwindling, but Nate and Elijah were already out at the woodpile filling their arms with more. Cullen ducked low under the bottom row of leaves, the ravaged muscles of his back protesting miserably. The tobacco was ripening well, and there was not a spare minute in the day to rest or stretch or lie flat on the ground for a minute or two to ease the worst spasms. Even dinner was a hurried affair, bolted down so quickly that it was in danger of coming straight back up again. Cullen's hands and forearms were coated with a thick slime of tobacco juice and green pulp and mud, and his thumbs were nicked and bloodied where the small, curved knife had slipped. He was soaked right through under his oilskins, for the dew was heavy in the fall and there was no way to keep from being out in the fields in the damp. His head ached and his throat was dry, and the scratchy wood smoke was not helping either.

He put out a hand to feel the heat from the nearest fire, and checked to be sure that it was well-contained in its ring of stones. Then he moved to the second, and the third. The leaves nearest this one were flecked with ash, and he squinted in the firelight as he tried to rub it away. The vein crackled beneath his thumb and he hastily withdrew his hand.

"Had some sparks?" he asked.

"Some," Lottie agreed. Her tone and her demeanor were both very matter-of-fact. Almost man-to-man, he thought, privately amused. "They didn' catch, though: snuffed out their own selves." She frowned. "Mist' Cullen, you isn't takin' the first turn again, is you?"

He snorted softly. So Lottie had joined the conspiracy to make sure he was looking after himself, had she? "No, I ain't," he said. "It's Elijah's turn: I'll have the watch after him, and Nate will take the last one. Your ma gets a night off to rest."

"I's glad," said Lottie. She dusted off the front of her dress and looked up at the ragged curtains of hanging leaves. "They goin' cure up nice," she said. "I bet you goin' get top price."

"Not for these ones," said Cullen. "Them's only lugs. But when we get in the middle leaves… yeah, I think we're going to get top price."

The admission hung in the heavy air, and he found himself at once frightened and relieved. He had given voice to his private hope – a hope so secret that he had scarcely even allowed himself to feel it. They were well into picking now, and every day he was out there paring from plants in the perfect vigor of health. All they needed was one more good rain, and the crop would be able to mature just as it should. The soil still had life in it after all: maybe last year had been nothing but a little bad luck. But admitting to that hope was only asking to have it dashed to pieces: his short years of farming had taught him that much.

Nate came in carrying a load of wood, followed closely by Elijah. The old man set down his burden and then moved over to the crate on which Lottie had been sitting. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the smoke.

"If I ain't down here in time, you come and wake me, you hear?" Cullen said, fixing him with a stern look.

Elijah nodded. "I got to be up to work in the mornin', Massa," he said. "Believe me: I ain't goin' sit up no longer than I got to."

Cullen stepped out from under the leaves and herded Lottie towards the door with a hand between her shoulder blades. "You get a nice night's rest," he said. "You done good work today."

She beamed happily at the compliment and took the lantern Nate handed to her, then went running down the hill towards the cabin: a small dancing light in the darkness. Cullen watched her go and then turned his face to the distant glowing windows of the house. He had taken only a few steps when he realized Nate was following him.

"There something you want?" he asked, turning and picking out the other man's vague shape in the gloom.

"Your brother-in-law," said Nate.

"Mr. Tate," Cullen corrected. All through the summer Nate had been toeing the line of disrespect, and he needed to be reminded of his place.

"That him," the darkie said. "He a abolitionist?"

"He got antislavery sentiments, that's for sure," said Cullen. "If you're worried he's going to drag me out of my bed and kill me in the dooryard you can sleep easy. Jeremiah Tate couldn't strangle a cat."

There was a stony silence. Evidently Nate had not been fearing that, and Cullen was just going to have to pray he had not been hoping for it either. He might not understand what his childhood friend was thinking from day to day, but he could feel the boiling resentment in his every word and glance. It ran deeper than the disdain of his master's poverty: it had to.

"What you think 'bout that?" he asked. "'Bout a man who say slaves ought to be free, then come down here so he can eat up the food we raise an' have Bethel wait on 'im?"

"I think the world's full of contradictions," said Cullen. "And I think there ain't many plantations 'round here where a field hand could get away with asking them sort of questions."

"Ain't many plantations 'round here would welcome a abolitionist," countered Nate.

Cullen grunted. "He ain't my choice of guest, but he's family. Mrs. Mary got a right to see her people. He been on his best behavior, and I expect the same from everyone on this place. Don't you go pestering him, you hear?"

"You jus' don't want me gettin' dangerous ideas from that man." The note of challenge in Nate's voice was unmistakable.

Cullen stepped forward imperiously. Nate's shoulders tensed but he did not step back. "Seems to me," Cullen said in a low voice thick with warning; "the ideas been there for a while now."

"Mebbe they has," said Nate. "Why ain't you never listened to Missus Mary? I know she done asked you for our freedom. You give her ev'ything else she want, why not that?"

This was too much. For a moment Cullen was lost in the same indignant, white-hot rage that he had felt on that spring day so many years ago when a boyish quarrel had left one of them bruised and the other bloodied. He felt all the strength left in his tired body swooping down into his right arm, and the muscles tightened. Then the thought of Mary stopped him. He had told her once, truthfully, that he had only ever struck one slave – and that in a silly childish argument. How could he face her if he raised his hand in anger again? And there was the question of Nate's response. His respect for his master had been crumbling for months now; maybe for years. A solid right hook would destroy the last fragments; proof that Cullen Bohannon was not a man of his word.

"Because I don't see how it would do either of us a damned bit of good," he growled, pounding the offending fist against his overalls. The sound of the impact was sticky and sodden; pathetic. "I ain't got money for wages, and you wouldn't stay without 'em. You really want to leave this place and find your way in the world by yourself? Where you going to sleep? How you going to eat? What about finding work? How you gonna raise the money for your freedom papers? We both know free Negroes ain't much welcome in this county: you think it's any different in the next one? Odds are you'd be run right out of the state. And what about Meg? You going to leave her? Because I don't think she'd go, free or not, wages or not. She got a child to think about. She got a husband."

"He ain't her husband, not by law," said Nate, but his voice was wavering now. "Slaves ain't got the right to marry; it don't mean nothing."

"Does to Meg," said Cullen. "Does to Lottie. And it does to me." He turned his head and spat into the grass: a thin trail of copious spittle that did not seem to ease the scratching in his throat. "Just you think about it before you start agitating. What the hell would you do with your freedom if you got it?"

He turned and walked away, leaving a dark shape fraught with tension in the night.

With guests in the house there was no question of sparing his work pants from being soiled by his sodden and tarry drawers, so he detoured through the toolshed. He had to fight to get his boots off, and so he did not put them on again but moved barefoot through the dooryard. Tending to the stock before going in to eat meant that Bethel was all but finished her work by the time Cullen came into the kitchen. She was putting the silver into the dish dresser drawer as he stepped over the threshold. She glanced at him but said nothing, focusing intently on her work. Too tired and troubled by the exchange with Nate to notice, Cullen poured water and set about the wearisome task of scrubbing his hands.

Mary was too busy with the guests to prepare her afternoon basket, and in any case Lottie could not be spared to bring it, and without this interim nourishment he was maddeningly hungry. The smell of the food – chicken pie, from the looks of it, with a wide assortment of side dishes – sent his stomach roiling. He hoped that Bethel would not insist upon sending him into the dining room to eat it: the Tates would be in the parlor and he didn't want Jeremiah to get it into his head to keep the master of the house company while he supped. Cullen was too tired and too cross to cope well with his brother-in-law, even if Mary assured him the man was behaving circumspectly.

He finished scouring the worst of the filth from his hands and dried them on the ragged old towel before he realized that Bethel had still said nothing to him. She was pouring coffee – fresh-brewed out of consideration for the guests – and focusing intently on the dark stream of fluid. She put down the pot and took the plate off the back of the stove.

"I think mebbe you bes' eat in here," she said quietly, nodding at the table. She did not meet his eyes.

"I was thinking the same thing," said Cullen, frowning. He watched as she set down the dishes and fumbled to lay out his cutlery and napkin. Her hands were clumsy, and he realized abruptly that they were shaking. "Here, now, what's the matter?" he asked, coming up beside her and bending in an attempt to look into her eyes. She turned her head, eluding him.

"Them roasted potatoes is a Tate fam'ly favorite," Bethel said. Her voice was hoarse. "Missus Mary, she read off the receipt for me an' I make 'em jus' like she say. It good I kep' some back for you, 'cause they done eat up every scrap I put on the table."

"Never mind the potatoes. What's the matter with you? Bethel, look at me." He caught hold of her elbow with finger and thumb, gently but firmly, and she turned, raising her eyes at last. There was such a look of bewildered hurt in them that Cullen felt his throat close in sympathetic pain. "What's wrong?" he said softly.

"Mist' Cullen," she said, and her voice broke. She shook her head, casting her gaze downward again. "Mist' Cullen, I didn' mean to do it, but I scared that chile."

"Scared that… you mean Miss Missy? You scared Missy?" he asked.

Bethel nodded wretchedly. "I didn' mean to do it. I ain't never scared a chile in my whole life, not really. Put 'em straight when they was misbehavin' maybe, but… I never scared you, did I? I ain't never scared you?" She looked up again, suddenly desperate.

"Hell, no!" he said, forgetting himself in his confusion and his desire to reassure her in her distress. "You never scared me. Why you think I was such a rapscallion?"

A thin smile flickered across Bethel's lips, but she was still grappling with her confession. "Well, I scared that chile. She scream like I put a hot poker in her eye, an' she call for her mama an' she say… she say…" She shook her head from side to side so that her headscarf flapped. "She say I's an African, an' I didn' ought to touch her."

Cullen's jaw tightened. "Frances Tate said that?" he hissed.

"Nawsir! Nawsir, the chile: Miss Missy, she say that. I on'y asked if she wanted help with her clothes an' her hair, her mama bein' down at breakfas', an' when I went to put my hand on her shoulder she jumped an' she screamed." Bethel's lean and steadfast shoulders slumped miserably. "I never see'd a chile so scared, Mist' Cullen."

He was aghast. He supposed if he tried he could understand how a child brought up in Maine, where darkies were few, might be spooked by a black face. What he couldn't understand was why her parent's hadn't prepared her for the notion of being tended to by a Negro. That and the use of the word _African_ to describe Bethel, whose people had lived on American soil for generations. Where had the girl even picked up that turn of phrase? From a parent, of course: quite likely her fool of a mother. And somehow the hypocrisy of Jeremiah Tate failing to teach his daughter to behave as well around a Negro as she would around some hired Irish girl was worst of all.

Unsure quite what to do or say to comfort Bethel, he reached to take hold of her other arm as well. Her gaze followed his hand and then travelled up to his face. She straightened herself and lifted her head and settled her face into its customary expression of quiet dignity. "It jus' a shame, that all," she said steadily. "I didn' mean to scare that li'l girl."

She was burying her hurt, hiding it as she had no doubt been doing all day. Cullen respected that, but his own anger was smoldering. These people had no right to come into his home and upset his people. Nate getting seditious notions was bad enough, but to wound Bethel like this was damn near unforgivable. But if she could compose herself he could too, and so he swallowed the boiling, helpless fury and tried to smile.

"She's just a fool Yankee child," he said. "Don't you take it to heart. Gabe loves you like he loves his own mama, don't he?"

Bethel's eyes brightened, and he hoped she understood what he meant but could not quite say. "Yassir, Mist' Cullen, he love me," she said. She reached to pat his breastbone. "Now bes' you sit down an' eat. That supper goin' get cold, an' I went to a heap of trouble to keep it waitin'. Sit down, honey. They's a apple pastry lef' from breakfas', an' custard too. I had to use sheep sorrel for the flavor on 'count we don' got no lemon, but she come out right an' I don' think them white folks knowed any different."

"I'm sure they didn't," Cullen said, letting her shepherd him to the bench where he could take the weight off his weary legs at last. "Ain't no one can match you for making do with what you got."

Bethel's lips curved in a small, pleased smile and she patted his shoulder. "I think we's managing nicely," she said. "An' Missus Mary been a good help: she a clever lady. You eat up now; you mus' be hungry."

Cullen tried to keep his back straight and his elbows tucked, but after the first two mouthfuls good manners were lost to the gnawing of his empty stomach. He hurriedly polished off what he had been given and was astonished when Bethel interrupted his attempt to sop up the last of the pale chicken gravy by serving him another piece of the rich, delicious pie. There had not been a second helping of a meat dish on the Bohannon table since the beginning of the year. Shutting his mind to the knowledge that they were wasting what they could ill afford to have at all, he polished off this as well, along with generous seconds of beans, stewed beets and the creamed parsnips made to Mary's specifications. He relished the half-forgotten taste of fresh-baked apples in a flaky crust that very nearly melted on his tongue, and to Bethel's obvious delight pronounced the sheep-sorrel custard a triumph.

By the time he had finished the heat of the kitchen and the comfort of a full stomach were working their spell, and his exhaustion was catching up to him. He found himself half-drowsing where he sat, and as Bethel cleared away the dishes Cullen tried to muster himself to rise. He managed it in the end, a bit unsteadily, and clung to the table a moment longer than should have been necessary while his head swam sluggishly. Bethel left the dishpan, drying her hands on her apron, and frowned up at him.

"Is you all right, Mist' Cullen?" she asked softly. "You ain't takin' sick again, is you?"

He smiled for her. "Naw: just tired," he said. "Reckon I could sneak upstairs without drawing attention to myself? I got to be up in a couple hours to take my turn in the tobacco barn, and I'd rather not waste 'em being civil to that fool woman."

"I 'spects they be headin' upstairs soon," Bethel said. "If they isn' you jus' tell Missus Mary the horses is settled for the night, an' I'll know to come an' fetch you to take care of somethin' for me."

He grinned at this invitation to a conspiracy. "Don't trouble with that," he said. "I'll make my own excuses. You stay right here; I bet you ain't had your own supper yet."

Bethel reached and patted his cheek affectionately. "I can't never enjoy it 'til I know my boy been fed," she said. "You get 'long to bed. I'll come wake you when it time to go."

"No need for that," said Cullen. "Elijah promised to fetch me if I ain't out there prompt. Get your own sleep: you need it, too."

His shoulder began to turn towards the door, and then he hesitated. Swiftly he bent and kissed Bethel's cheek lightly. It was something he had not done in years, not since coming home from New York in delirious newlywed happiness, but something moved him tonight. She had had a hard day; a terrible day. He could do at least this little thing to make it a wee bit better.

Then he hurriedly slipped out of the kitchen so he did not need to see her shining eyes.

The dining room was dark, and he moved carefully around the table, conscious of its added length with the leaves tugged out. The light from the parlor cast an angular wedge towards the doorjamb, bright and cheerful and bothersome. Conscious of his bare feet and grubby trousers and thoroughly soaked and tobacco-stained shirt, Cullen moved with some trepidation towards it. He was about to step out into the corridor when the light flickered and dimmed, and the murmured voices in the parlor shifted with the whisper of skirts and the creak of Jeremiah Tate's shoes on the floorboards. The glow grew feebler as another lamp was snuffed, and Cullen retreated hurriedly into the gloom of the room as his brother-in-law's voice drew nearer.

"…quite recovered from the journey, after all. You must take care of your health, my dear. Go on ahead: I'll be with you presently."

The rustle of Frances's frock moved down the corridor, and light ladylike footfalls sounded on the stairs. When they had passed Jeremiah spoke again, his voice now graver and less aggravatingly adenoidal. "Do give my apologies to your husband. Does he always keep such very late hours?" he asked.

"There's a great deal of work to be done at picking time," said Mary. "Cullen is very dedicated."

Tate grunted in mild assent. "Admirable," he said. There was a brief and uncomfortable pause. "Mary Beth, about this morning…"

"I think the less said about that the better," Mary murmured.

"Nevertheless, what Frances said was unkind. If the woman's feelings are hurt I do want to make amends. What's usual in these situations?" Jeremiah hedged. He sounded extremely uncomfortable, and his foot kept shuffling against the edge of the parlor rug with a low shushing sound.

"I'm afraid I have never before been put in such a situation," said Mary, and Cullen could hear the slenderest edge of ice creeping into her tone. "Though I am certain that Bethel would accept an apology."

There was a blustering cough. "Mary, you must see that's out of the question!" Tate huffed. "Apologize to a servant? Frances? Good Lord!"

Cullen's rage was rising again, and only the knowledge that his tired mind and overtaxed body would not leave him at his best kept him from storming into the corridor spoiling for a fight. He was glad he had refrained when Mary spoke.

"Shame on you!" she exclaimed, hushed but vehement. "You're just as thoughtless as she is. Bethel deserves an apology after the things Frances said – to say nothing of Missy! I can't quite believe…" She drew in a deep breath that must have strained against her stays. When she spoke again her voice was prim and composed, but so very cold. "I think it best that you reflect upon the matter carefully, Jeremiah. You were not at your best today."

Tate cleared his throat. "Well," he grunted. Cullen imagined his face was turning that unpleasant purplish hue. "Well. Goodnight then, Mary. I hope we shall be reconciled tomorrow. It is not how I would have chosen to spend our first day reunited."

"Nor I," said Mary, but she did not give an inch in her tone. "Goodnight."

Cullen held his breath as the man's footfalls travelled up the stairs and across to the front bedroom. He heard the distant click of the door and low, unintelligible murmuring, and he pushed himself off the sideboard and moved to lean heavily on the doorpost.

Mary was standing in the sphere of light cast by the candle sconce by the parlor door, looking in the direction her brother had gone. Her handkerchief was balled in one slender hand, and the other was pressed to the front of her basque as if she were striving not to be sick. Cullen watched her for a moment, but he could not leave her in such turmoil for long.

"What did Frances say to Bethel?" he asked quietly.

Mary startled, shoulders jerking in surprise as she turned wide-eyed towards him. He was in the shadows, but she could probably see the sketch of his features and the glint of his eyes reflecting the candlelight. She smoothed her skirt unnecessarily and made a deliberate effort to loosen the fist about her handkerchief.

"She didn't speak _to_ Bethel," she said in a mournful, tremulous voice; "except to tell her she had no right to be touching her child. But she said to me, with Bethel standing right there, that it was bad enough to have a cook—"

"Bethel ain't no cook!" Cullen snapped, louder and more emphatically than he had meant to. At Mary's anxious look he grimaced apologetically and gestured for her to continue.

"—bad enough to have her doing the upstairs maiding," said Mary. "But to let her dress the children and fix hair was p—perfectly absurd."

Once again Cullen was almost certain his temper was going to get the better of him. He could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears, and all he wanted to do was charge up those stairs, fling open the door to his grandpappy's bedroom, and give that wretched woman a piece of his mind. But Mary was watching him, her soft eyes sorrowful. She looked as if she wanted to cry, but she was restraining her undignified urges. He forced himself to do the same.

"And what did you say?" he breathed.

Mary squared her slender shoulders. "I told her that Bethel wasn't a cook, just as you said. That she was our head woman who kindly consented to cook for us because we have no other house servants. That she was my lady's maid and dressed my hair for balls, and that I would never trust anyone with my son the way I trust Bethel."

Cullen processed this slowly and asked; "You said this right then? With Bethel still standing right there?"

"Yes," said Mary. "Yes, of course I did."

"Good." He stepped out to meet her, the pounding in his head dimming a bit for the first time that evening. He stopped carefully short of her skirts, but reached to take her hands. "That's good. She ought to know we'll take up for her when guests are…"

He stopped, remembering belatedly that he was talking about his wife's family. He tried to think of a way to apologize to Mary without suggesting in any way that his obvious scorn for the Tates' behavior was unjustified, but she spared him.

"When guests are thoughtlessly cruel," she said. She shook her head. "Oh, Cullen, the look on her face! Missy was shrieking like a little hellion, and Frances started scolding, and Bethel just stood there… It was as if they'd torn out her heart. I tried to speak to her before dinner, but she just patted my arm and told me it didn't matter. It _does_ matter. Missy is young and Frances is foolish, but they have no right to hurt her like that. Not Bethel."

"No right at all," said Cullen grimly. He drew a circle across the back of Mary's hand with his thumb, callouses snagging on the silk of her skin. He looked down at her dainty hand in his coarsened one, nail beds black with tar stains and every pit and wrinkle marked as if with ink. The shallow cuts stung even under that gentle pressure. "But Bethel understands they're foolish, and she knows we don't think that of her. That's what really matters. Another twelve days and we'll be putting them on a train back North and we can all forget about this."

"I'm sorry," Mary whispered.

Cullen's eyes drifted towards the ceiling in the direction of the guest bedroom. "Can't be helped," he said. "Sounds like they're settled. Let's sneak up to bed."

They went, and were soon tucked under the light coverlet with their dreaming son between them. Despite his clawing exhaustion and his aching head Cullen scarcely seemed to sleep. He kept waking groggily, unable to find a comfortable spot on the straw mattress that crunched and rustled every time he moved. At such times his mind was full of blurred and angry thoughts and the impotent desire to do _something _not only to avenge the injury to Bethel's loyal heart but to ease his own disconsolate rage. Then he would doze again, shallowly, and wake in hot agitation. His watch lay open in the beam of moonlight that slipped between the curtains, and he found himself constantly twisting to look at it. The hour came at last for him to rise, and he got up as smoothly as he could. The straw tick jostled more than the feather bed did, and Mary's slumbering form rocked as he stood. She did not stir, but Gabe rolled from his stomach onto his side, thumb questing for his mouth but falling short. Cullen watched him, almost smiling. It looked like they were breaking him of that habit at last.

He had put on fresh drawers and an undershirt instead of his nightclothes, and so was able to dress quickly. He crept past the closed nursery door behind which the little Tate brat was sleeping. He glowered at the door to the front bedroom as though he could curse his sister-in-law with foul dreams. Then he passed down the stairs like a shadow, feeling his way through to the kitchen. Bethel had not waited to see him off after all, and he was glad, but she had left the fire-door of the stove open so that the embers cast their reddish light to show his way. She had brought in his boots, and they stood by the bench wiped and oiled and ready. Cullen wrestled them on against the grinding of his spine, and stood up again.

There was a tin cup sitting on the table and he looked at it, momentarily puzzled. It was not like Bethel to leave dishes lying about. Then he noticed that the coffee pot was still sitting on the back of the stove. He picked it up with a rag around the handle, and felt the heft of fluid within. The first cup he drank straight, black and strong. Then he poured another and dosed it liberally with sorghum, hooking the handle of the cup over his thumb. From the bowl on the table he snagged an apple, crisp and fresh and remarkably unbruised after its long journey from the orchards of Maine. Then he stepped out into the balmy autumn night and left the slumbering house behind.

Elijah was relieved with only the barest of words between the two men, and Cullen was left alone. He wrapped the old horse-blanket around his shoulders and sat down on the crate, bowed low over his lap with his forearms braced on his thighs. Despite the heat of the barn he was shivering, his body craving sleep and crying out for it with chills. He nursed his coffee and he ate the apple and he watched the fires in silence, brooding.


	28. The Indelicate Question

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Indelicate Question**

It was not yet noon, and already Nate had been awake for eight hours. He had rousted himself out of bed in the darkest part of the night to drag on his work clothes and trudge out to the tobacco barn to relieve the master from his watch. Neither of them had spoken as they traded off; Mister Cullen had clambered stiffly to his feet, shrugged the coarse blanket from his shoulders, and brought in a fresh load of wood before disappearing into the night. Nate had discharged his tedious duty until Lottie came just before dawn, and then headed up to the house for a good hot breakfast laid on for him by Bethel. Excused from tending the stock he had actually been able to savor it, and then he had headed down to the tobacco to meet the others just as the light grew bright enough to work. They were all accomplished at timing it perfectly by now. Meg and Elijah with their poles, Nate and Mister Cullen with their knives, they set in with silent determination.

It was another hot day for the first week in October, and Nate was sweating. There had been a heavy dew in the night: his clothes were soaked and his head was aching. But he had been at this work all of his adult life and he was used to its miseries. He worked steadily, carefully, as quickly as he could. They were keeping on top of the crop, staying just ahead of the ripening stems, but as soon as they got some rain – which they were bound to have any day now – the best leaves would hasten to the end of their growth. Those had to be taken at just the right time. He might be bitter and he might be frustrated, but Nate wasn't stupid. They all relied upon this crop just as much as the master did. More, because no one could sell Mister Cullen off if money got too short.

Nate knew that _he_ was in no danger of being sold, whatever happened. He was the most valuable slave on the place, but without him the shrunken plantation could not possibly run. Elijah worked as hard as he could, and Nate had to admit grudgingly that the master labored longer and harder than any of them, but Elijah was old and Mister Cullen inept. Meg took on the work of a man, steady and determined and uncomplaining, but there were things she couldn't do. She was just too small to hoist a tree trunk or a loaded tobacco box, or to drive a plow behind a pair of belligerent mules. Without Nate, with his strength and his skill and his dogged endurance, the farm would fail entirely. That was the real reason, he thought, that Mister Cullen wouldn't even consider manumission: he couldn't afford to do without Nate, and he had no means of coercing him to stay here as a free man.

Or so Nate had firmly believed, up until last night. Because as much as he hated to admit it even to himself, Mister Cullen was right about one thing. Nate couldn't just leave the people he cared about and go off somewhere to seek his own fortune as a freedman. How could he leave Meg here, with her girl, trying to do the work he left behind? Or old Elijah, who despite his aggravating refusal to speak ill of the master was a good man and a good friend. And Bethel, who would never abandon her white family whatever came to pass – he couldn't leave her either. What _would_ he do with his freedom if he had it, the way things were now? He wanted it. He believed he had a right to it. But what would he do with it?

This unsettling speculation had been wearing at him all day, and it was adding to the weariness born of a brutally early rising. He cut another leaf and handed it up to Meg, watching from the corner of his eye as she slipped it over the pointed end of her pole and settled it carefully. Her sun-beaten face was round and beautiful, cast off at an angle as she watched the work in the next row. She was gnawing thoughtfully at her lower lip.

"Somethin' on your mind?" Nate asked quietly.

She looked at him, surprised, and reached to take the next leaf. "Somethin' on yours?" she asked. "You been clammed up like a pickle pot all morning."

"You ever think 'bout it?" Nate muttered, keeping his voice low enough that he could not possibly be heard three plants away. "What you'd do if you was free?"

Meg laughed, but not very earnestly. She shook her head. "What you wan' go grabbin' at moonbeams for?" she asked. "We ain't free."

"Would you go off?" asked Nate. "Go North, maybe?"

"Go North?" Meg whispered. Her eyes were suddenly haunted and her hand trembled as she tugged the split stalk down. "You mean leave here? Leave Miss'ippi?"

"Would you want to? See the world, go someplace where there ain't no slaves. They got tall buildings in Chicago… maybe head out to New York an' see that Crystal Palace Missus Bohannon used to talk about?" he tried.

"That burned down," she said, lips scarcely moving. Her gaze was following the movement of the other pair of laboring bodies. "Bethel said. Why you talkin' like a fool? Min' your work."

"Mist' Tate a abolitionist," Nate whispered. "Got me to thinkin'. Missus Mary, she used to ask the massa to free us; offer us wages. Why she don' do that no more?"

"Ain't no money for wages," said Meg. "Ain't no money for food: he bought up that barrel of flour on credit. Mist' Cullen borrowing money jus' so's we don' go hungry."

"Borrowing money to put on a show for his rich relations, more like," muttered Nate.

Meg shook her head. "We's down to the end of the cornmeal," she said, very quietly. "Bethel say there enough for three-four more days, then we's all goin' be eatin' that flour. Why you think Mist' Cullen got a barrel 'stead of jus' a sack? An' she killin' a chicken to feed us tonight, 'cause the meat all but gone. When the tobacco in, maybe Mist' Cullen go hunting, but otherwise everyone goin' have to do without."

This was something Nate had not expected. He had known that some of the stores were running low, of course: the master had had to fetch salt, also on account, and the yams were gone. And meals had been short of meat and starch for a while now, fleshed out with vegetables instead. But he had not imagined they might actually run out of cornmeal. In a land of plenty this was the last and most desperate sign of poverty, and a borrowed barrel of wheat flour did not change that fact. He straightened as he moved to the next plant, looking down the field to where Mister Cullen was stooped beside Elijah. He frowned, squinting into the sunlight.

"It got that bad?" he asked.

Meg nodded. "So don' you go talkin' nonsense 'bout freedom," she said. "He got more pressin' worries than your fool notions. An' no," she added stoutly. "I wouldn' go North. I was born right here on this land: I's a Miss'ippi woman. If I was free I'd wan' live here, right here where I could be near my Peter an' the folks as loves me. Wages, they'd be nice, but I couldn' leave regar'less. Break my heart, that would. This here's home."

He looked at her, studying her face thoughtfully. "Don' you never wish for nothin' better?" he asked.

Meg squared her shoulders and reached to take the next broad paring. "Course I does," she says. "I wish this-here crop bring in good money so's Mist' Cullen can pay what he owes an' put a little bit by. Then I wish nex' year's be better still, an' maybe he able to buy up another han'. He'd buy my Peter if he could: I know he would. 'Nother strong man on the place, an' we could turn over ten more acres: more tobacco, more money, maybe more niggers. Peter 'n me, we could have a new baby. I's still young enough to have a baby. An' when I's old an' can' work no more, Mist' Gabe be the master, an' he see I's taken care of. Tha's my wish."

Nate felt his discouragement mounting. "Ain't you got no dream for a diff'rnt kinda life?" he asked helplessly.

"Them's jus' dreams," Meg said firmly, jerking her head. "This here my life: slave or free don't make no difference."

They worked in silence to the end of the row, Meg moving with her simple, comely grace and Nate following her with his knife snicking at the tobacco stems. He wanted to shout his frustration to the sky. Didn't Meg see that if they kept on dismissing freedom as a foolish dream they'd never get it? He didn't imagine it would be easy: he knew free blacks had a hard life. They couldn't move freely from place to place as white men could; they couldn't do a lot of the work white men did. If they didn't have proof of honest employment they could be arrested as vagrants and jailed. If they lost or misplaced or forgot to carry their freedom papers, renewed at a cost of half a month's wages, they could even be sold back into slavery. But it would be better, wouldn't it, to be his own man and make his own choices?

He waited until Elijah's pole was full, and he and Mister Cullen slung it between them to be carried to the grass. Then he said; "But wouldn' it be better to be free, Meg? Even if it meant doin' this same work, woudn' it be better to be free? Massa out here every day, bendin' his back same as I do, but this here be _his_ tobacco. His land. He free."

Meg stared at him for a moment in silence, and then looked down to where the stoop-backed figure of Mister Cullen was bent low over the bucket of drinking water. He drank greedily and took off his hat, drawing his befouled sleeve across his brow, and looked out over the field. He did not even seem to see them: he was looking at the sea of plants, all but a few now bereft of their lugs and creeping on to ripeness too slowly without rain. Even at this distance his pale, haggard face betrayed his weight of worry. His shoulders slumped and his head bowed, and he rammed on the tattered straw hat as he slogged wearily back to the row. Nate was watching him so intently that he did not realize Meg had turned her eyes back to him until she spoke.

"He ain't free," she said softly. Then she put out her hand for another leaf.

_*discidium*_

It was coming on again. Cullen could no longer dismiss the warnings of his sickening body. Through the morning he had just about managed to convince himself that the blistering headache was nothing more than the result of broken and inadequate sleep and his brooding about Bethel's treatment at the hands of Frances Tate. When he had found himself almost unable to eat at dinnertime he had reasoned it was just the heat of the day blunting his appetite. But in the middle of the afternoon the first wave of dizziness had struck as he moved from one plant to the next, and he had given up his attempts to deceive himself. He was taking ill again.

The dew in the tobacco took on the foul humors of the night air: that was what modern medicine taught, according to Doc Whitehead. Night air brought on all manner of evils, and surely this was one of them. The dew was heavier in the fall, and to cut the lowest leaves Cullen had to get right into the plants. Each morning he was soaked to the skin after only two or three, and when the sun climbed high and he began to perspire all hope of drying out died. By nightfall, when at last it grew too dark to tell which leaves were paling along the veins, he was shivering in his wet clothes and so wretchedly at the mercy of his throbbing head that he could hardly bear Elijah's call to the others that it was quitting time. The trips to and from the tobacco barn, carrying across each shoulder one end of a laden pole, left him quaking with weariness and dizzy enough that he almost lost his balance when stepping out of his oilskins.

In the stable he hesitated at the foot of the ladder, staring up at the hayloft and wondering whether he would reel with vertigo and fall to his death if he tried to climb up there. A blur of coarse clothes and dark limbs passed before his eyes: Elijah, scrambling up to pitch down fresh bedding for the stock. Nate was mucking out the mules' stalls, and Cullen bestirred himself to pick up the bucket to haul water for Pike and Bonnie. It scraped noisily against the bed of the long trough by the paddock doors, and he flinched at the sound. It was almost empty.

The well was not far from the stable, but stumbling to and fro carrying the heavy buckets was dreary work. Cullen made three trips before Nate finished with his business and came out to join him. It was better to fill the trough now, when there were three of them working. Tonight it was Cullen's turn to take the last watch, which meant he would be the one breakfasting late while the others did the morning chores. He didn't want to leave things half-done for Nate and Elijah to make up tomorrow. Still, by the time the trough was brimming and the horses and mules watered and fed, Cullen was so exhausted and lightheaded that he doubted his ability to reach the house unaided.

He managed it, but had to sit down on the back steps with his head in his hands until the world slowed its spinning a little. Drenched in a cold sweat and hoping that it was not obvious how badly he was shaking, he dragged himself up onto the stoop and into the house. The kitchen was empty, and instead of stopping to wash his hands he dropped straight onto the bench. He sat there for a long time, bowed low and clutching the edge of the table while cold waves of nausea broke over him. He was just beginning to master himself when Bethel came in from the dining room.

"You ain't well," she said, bluntly and almost immediately. "You gone grey."

"I'll be all right in a minute," he huffed shallowly. Bethel crossed the room and thrust her palm against his brow, sticky with tobacco sap. She clicked her tongue worriedly and bent to peer into his eyes.

"What ailin' you?" she asked.

He was too worn out and felt too ill to even attempt to prevaricate with Bethel. "I think it's the tobacco sickness again," he said. "My head feels like…" He released his right hand from its grip on the board to gesture vaguely, and then used it to shelter his eyes from the glare of the lamp.

"That no good at all," Bethel said. She poured him a glass of cool water from the pitcher on the windowsill, and set it in front of him before moving off to the dish dresser.

Cullen's arm fell to the tabletop, his fingers curling around the glass as he stared at it. Slowly, trying not to let his hand tremble, he raised it to his lips. The first sip was tentative, but it awakened a desperate thirst and he drained the vessel hastily. He was panting quietly when Bethel turned back to him, a teaspoon sprinkled with grainy powder held carefully in her left hand. She picked up the bottle of syrup and poured a little carefully over the medicine.

"Here, swallow this down," she said, holding it out.

Meekly he opened his mouth and she tipped the bitter-tasting concoction onto his tongue. With a thin cough, not quite gagging, he swallowed it and tightened his lips to rake off the last of the residue as Bethel withdrew the spoon. She looked at it, satisfied, and then fetched the pitcher to pour him another helping of water. Cullen rinsed the grit from his teeth and palate and drank.

"Good boy," said Bethel, as though she were speaking to Gabe. "That goin' help the headache. You gots to get out them wet clothes. Don' you move: I go fetch somethin' for you to cover up with."

"I can't go running around the place half-dressed," Cullen muttered. "Frances Tate would have a fit of the vapors."

"You can' sit there soaked to the skin, neither," said Bethel. "Not if you's come down sick. It the dampness cause it; you know that." Hurriedly she took the warming plate from the stove and laid it before him. "Jus' try an' eat a little, Mist' Cullen. I be back direc'ly."

"Don't say nothing to—" he began, but too late: she was gone.

The tantalizing smells of supper held little appeal. He plucked the cloth off the plate and fumbled with his fork, knowing he ought to savor his meal but unable to quite muster up any desire to do so. He scooped up some peas and chewed them slowly. They had a faint taste of boiling bacon to them and his mouth flooded with the thin saliva that seemed to be part of the affliction. The salted mackerel he had brought from Meridian had been carefully filleted and fried delicately in batter flavored with herbs, but its strong fishy taste was too much for his uneasy stomach. He turned his attention on the potatoes instead, but though they were smooth and rich with cream he found himself wishing for the familiar comfort of yams instead. With that thought came the calculation of how many weeks more before that crop would be ready – and close upon its heels the unhappy reflection that they would have to be dug and no one else was going to do it but them. He wondered how Bethel was managing with the garden, bereft of Lottie and Mary to help her. He would have to ask.

Bethel returned at last, a bundle of clean clothing in her arms. Cullen pushed away his half-full plate and tried to stand, but his arms quivered and his legs could not quite find purchase on the floor. Before he could exert a fresh effort Bethel was shooing him back onto the bench. She brought the washbasin and pitcher to the table, and then fetched some rags. While Cullen sat scrubbing his hands she wetted a cloth and bathed his face. He submitted to the ministrations, finding it easier not to argue and, though he would have been loath to admit it, taking comfort in what had been a childhood ritual. When she came to the clots of tobacco juice in his beard she withdrew her hand and sighed.

"You wan' I should fix you a bath?" she asked. "You ain' goin' get clean otherwise."

He shook his head tiredly. He had neither the will nor the energy for a bath tonight, and he didn't want her hauling water in the dark.

"I'll manage," he said, lathering his fingers with the coarse brown soap and working it into his whiskers. It was just as well that Mary had given them a trim on Saturday night; they would have been difficult to cope with otherwise.

When he was as clean as he could reasonably make himself, he turned on the bench and Bethel brought the boot jack. She helped him out of shirt and undershirt, and peeled off his foul stockings. Then she withdrew into the dining room to allow him privacy for the undignified task of wriggling out of his trousers and drawers. He struggled into the fresh undergarments and then into what he realized belatedly were his second-best day pants. It was difficult to manage the buttons without standing up straight, but although his headache was receding the giddiness persisted. He unbuttoned his suspenders from the coarse work pants and transferred them to the pair he was wearing. He was just looking at the shirt and wondering whether it was worth the contortions to his aching back to put it on, when Bethel came back into the room.

"They's still in the parlor," she said, setting down his worn slippers for him. "Look like Missus Tate done recovered from her trip; she askin' why we ain't got a piano."

"We ain't got a piano because until Mary came there weren't nobody to play one," Cullen said sourly. Once he had imagined a piano might make a suitable fifth-anniversary present for his musically gifted wife. Now he'd settle for being able to feed her through the winter.

He shoved his feet into the slippers and picked up the shirt. Bethel plucked it from his fingers and shook it out, then held it so he could ease his arms into it with as little pain as possible. He buttoned it slowly, his cut thumb catching on the finely stitched holes. "Guess I'd best go in and say good evening," he mumbled. "Can't leave Mary alone with them all the time."

"You finish you' supper firs'," said Bethel. "You ain't hardly touched that fish."

To oblige her he took a few more mouthfuls, but he could not bring himself to touch the mackerel. When Bethel offered him a piece of cake with cream and blackberries he shook his head. "Got no room for it," he said.

She frowned worriedly. "You's ill all right," she said. "Ap'tite went las' time, too. You didn' ought to be goin' out there tomorrow."

"I got to: picking can't stop," said Cullen. At her fierce look he added hastily; "Maybe Elijah could cut for a while and let me take the pole. Least I could stay dry that way." He regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth, for his pride still spoke louder than his common sense and he wanted to prove himself as untiring as Nate.

"You see he do," said Bethel; "or you ain't working tomorrow. I'll tie you to the bedpost if I has to, Mist' Cullen: we ain't goin' have you prostrate with sickness again, not like las' time. You hear me? We ain't."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. There was no arguing with Bethel when she got that look in her eye, and he believed her threat. It would be far more humiliating to be ordered to bed than to hold a tobacco rod for a morning. Slowly he got up, surprised to find that his muscles protested less vehemently than before. It seemed the anodyne powder was working its magic after all.

Bethel let him go without another word, but he could feel her eyes boring into the back of his neck as he stepped through into the dining room. Tonight he did not hesitate; at least not for very long. The meal and the comfort of dry clothes seemed to have done something to salve his spirit; he felt almost good-natured as he crossed the hallway to the inviting glow of the parlor.

Mary was sitting in on one side of the sofa, whipping a muslin collar onto Lottie's new frock. Frances was beside her, knitting lace. There were lit lamps on both the little tables, and another on the mantelpiece as well, providing ample illumination for the ladies' dainty work. Cullen's armchair was occupied by Jeremiah, who was sitting forward in it as he regaled the ladies with what was apparently meant to be an amusing story. He stopped speaking as Cullen entered, and looked up with a broad grin.

"I was starting to wonder if we'd ever see you again!" he said cheerfully. "Another day's work done?"

"Just so," said Cullen. "Can I offer you—" He stopped as he turned towards the little sideboard. The whiskey decanter was empty: evidently Tate didn't mind helping himself. "—a cigar?" he amended, moving to the secretary and opening the drawer that held his private cache of tobacco. He chose one for himself and waited for his guest's reply.

"Thank you, no: I have my own," said Jeremiah, patting the front of his topcoat. He was dressed in evening clothes, having apparently changed for supper. The placid, plump idleness of his face was suddenly tremendously irritating to Cullen. His intention to sit down for a bit of studiously pleasant conversation dissolved. There were other things he wanted to say to his brother-in-law, and his blood was running just hot enough to say them now.

He smiled silkily. "I thought I might take me a little walk," he said. "Care to join me? I'm sure the ladies would like some time to themselves."

Mary turned in her seat, casting a small surprised look at him, but before she could speak her brother got to his feet with an affable grunt. "Why not?" he asked. "I'd prefer to be shown about the place in daylight, of course, but as you're otherwise engaged during those hours this will just have to do."

The acerbic retort that he had better things to do than entertain errant Yankees did not quite make it past the floodgate of Cullen's lips. His smile strained, but he inclined his head and moved towards the door. He paused to bow to the ladies. "Good evening, Miss Frances. Mary," he said. "I trust I may have the pleasure of your company a little later on?"

Frances made the insipid obligatory reply, and Mary said; "Are you quite sure you don't want us to join you?"

"Quite sure, Mary Beth; quite sure!" said Jeremiah. "I promise we shall both be on our very best behavior!"

Cullen did not second this pledge, but ushered the other man through the entryway and out onto the veranda. The night air was warm and heavy and still. The parlor windows, open to catch any whisper of a breeze, shone golden with diffuse light behind the muslin curtains. Jeremiah moved as if to sit in Mary's rocker, and Cullen's annoyance heightened. Instead of speaking out, he shuffled down the steps onto the carefully raked drive, remembering too late that he was shod only in his slippers. Jeremiah followed him down towards the whitewashed fence, tinted blue by the glow of the waning gibbous moon. A few more steps away from the house brought them out of the aura of the lit windows, and above them the vast bowl of the sky glittered bright with stars. Cullen followed the paddock fence a little farther still and then halted, crossing his arms to lean upon it. He clamped the thin home-pressed cigar between his teeth and realized belatedly that he had neglected to bring a match.

Jeremiah came beside him, putting one foot up on the lowest rail. He dug inside of his coat as he craned his neck to look at the sky. "I always forget how many more stars there are away from the gaslights. It's pretty country out here, but the heat's another matter. How do you manage at the height of summer?"

Cullen shrugged, regretting the motion as it sent a spasm up into his neck. "We're used to it, I guess."

Tate at last produced his cigar case, choosing one with care and rolling it between thumb and forefinger before piercing it and putting it to his lips. He struck a match against the fence and the brilliant orange flame flared. He puffed, drawing the fire into the tobacco, and then handed the lit match to Cullen, who ignited his own. For a moment they were both silent, savoring the first fragrant mouthfuls of smoke. Cullen exhaled a long, thin ribbon that curled away into nothingness over the paddock.

"Tate, you been talking to my people?" he asked in a thoughtful voice.

The other man sighed. "Look, if this is about what Missy said to your woman…"

"It ain't," said Cullen. He turned to stare at the man, knowing the moonlight was catching eerily in his eyes and hoping the effect was not lost on Jeremiah. "Though since you mention it I got to say that incident don't paint you in the best light." He had a few choice words he wanted to say about Frances, too, but he would have to keep them to himself. A gentleman could criticize another gentleman, but never a lady.

"It was a misunderstanding," Jeremiah blustered. "There are so few Negroes in Maine; Missy had hardly seen one in all her life before this trip. And of course the ones we saw when we were traveling weren't the sort you want a young girl associating with: riverboat crews and railroad men. You know."

"So you told her to keep her distance," Cullen said, nodding. "Gave her to believe she weren't safe 'round them. And just happened to forget to mention we got darkies on the place deserving of a bit more basic human courtesy than she'd give a stranger at a railroad station."

A surprised guffaw burst from Tate's throat, and a shower of sparks flew from the tip of his cigar. "That's mighty fine coming from a man like you, Bohannon!" he said. "Basic human courtesy. How about that!"

Cullen's eyes narrowed. The man had been on his best behavior for two days now, and clearly that was taking its toll. He was also a little bit tipsy, from the smell of things. Cullen himself was feeling the warm courage of the anodyne powder, and his exhaustion was quickly losing ground to his indignation. The truth, now he cared to admit it, was that he had been resenting this invasion of his home since Mary had first confessed to proposing it, and he was just about ready to take his pound of flesh.

"Why don't you say what you really mean?" he goaded.

"All right, then." Jeremiah's foot slipped off the fence and he squared off towards his brother-in-law. "If you're so concerned about human dignity, how do you live with yourself, flourishing off the bondage of others?"

It was Cullen's turn to laugh, a low and bitter chuckle. By no stretch of the imagination was he _flourishing_. Still, they had come to the point at last: the blazing gulf between them that they had both been making an effort to ignore – Tate more than Cullen, maybe, but only because Cullen was out there failing to flourish right along with his slaves instead of lounging in the parlor.

"That's how you see it?" he said scornfully. "Me and Mary, living fat off the land while the downtrodden Negro suffers beneath my boot-heel?" His tongue rolled around the roof of his mouth as he fought he urge to spit. Instead he swallowed thickly and took another drag on his cigar. "Don't know what you been imagining, but it ain't like that. I treat my people well."

"It doesn't matter how you treat them; they're still your slaves," said Jeremiah. "They are deprived of their most basic right as children of God: their liberty. Can you really be so deluded that you think they're content just to serve you?"

Nate's sullen, impassive face flashed through Cullen's mind, but at once it was followed by Bethel's tender expression as she wiped tobacco juice from his eyebrow. "Most of them are," he said. Then his voice hardened. "And if they ain't that's between me and them, and no business of yours. The trouble with you Northerners is you think you got a right to tell the rest of the world how to live. We get on all right here. Times is hard, but we all do our best and we're getting by. You got no right to tell us we ain't."

He realized too late that he had given the clear admission of his poverty that he had been so anxious to keep private. It didn't matter that the man surely guessed it, with Cullen out in the fields all day and Mary wearing dresses three years behind the fashion, with no wine on the supper table and no shoes on Gabe's feet. He hadn't wanted to admit it.

But Tate had heard something else entirely. "Even if that's true," he said; "even if the slaves on _this_ plantation aren't miserable, by keeping them you're helping to prop up the corruption of a system that is the very root of evil! You cannot build a good society on the enforced labor of others."

Cullen snorted. "I lived in New York, remember? Damn near eight months. I've seen the factories and shipyards full of immigrants working fourteen hours a day for a starvation wage and going home to some filthy overcrowded tenement room at night – if they got a roof over their heads at all. I've seen women begging on the street 'cause the labor bosses don't let their husbands take home enough of their pay to feed their children. Old people sleeping in stairways 'cause there's no one to look after them. Men that can't find work no matter where they try; begging, weeping sometimes when they grovel for a job. Children like little animals, half-naked in the snow, fishing in the ash-barrels for scraps to eat. Grime and poverty and disease and hunger."

He sent out another pillar of smoke. "My people ain't free, but they're fed. They got beds to sleep in and clothes on their backs. They know if they get sick someone's here to look after them, and ain't nobody going to turn them out of their homes 'cause they can't pay rent. When they get too old to work I'll do right by them, and when they die I'll see they get a good burial in the family plot in the cemetery in Meridian. You tell me who's got the better society."

He waited, a little breathless after this speech and enjoying the euphoria that came from saying one's piece in a clear and cogent way. The tip of Jeremiah's cigar glowed red as he inhaled, and he shook his round head as the smoke poured from his lips.

"You don't understand," he said sadly. "_You _aren't society, Bohannon. Your pretty little farm isn't representative of the whole South. I'd lay a good bet it isn't even representative of the neighborhood. For every man like you, every place like this, there's another one where the slaves are wretched, frightened creatures ruled by fear and pain. What about the planters who whip a man for being too sick to work? Or sell a mother away from her children? What about the runaways who are branded and mutilated and killed?"

Cullen closed his ears to these protests, like a telegraph operator breaking the circuit to mute an irrelevant message. During his time in New York, _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had enjoyed wild popularity in the well-to-do circles his family connections had placed him in. Whenever a new acquaintance learned that in addition to the aberration of being from Mississippi he in fact _owned slaves_, he had been subjected to interrogation as to the veracity of the authoress's claims. Whipping was common practice with recalcitrant darkies, but certainly not with those too ill to work; not on decent plantations, at least. Selling a mother away from her children… well, that too was done, though it was more often the other way around and anyway not until the children were mostly grown – or so he hoped. He didn't much like to think about that, not since he'd had a boy of his own. As for runaways, they were generally given their punishment and put straight back to work.

"We got laws in this state against killing slaves anyhow," he said aloud, interrupting Tate's soliloquy with the tail end of his own. "Right to property don't go so far as wilful murder."

"I see," said Jeremiah coldly. "So you're telling me you know a white man who's beaten one of his Negroes to death and actually been convicted of murder? Or even tried for it?"

"I don't know a white man who's beaten one of his Negroes to death!" Cullen bit back. "You ain't thinking rationally about this. A slave's got value. A good strong field hand – a field hand, mind you, with no other skills – is worth eight hundred dollars or more! A man with a trade, maybe even twice that. My girl Lottie would sell for four hundred on potential alone: slaves got _value_. A man would be crazy to kill or cripple one, even a stubborn one. It'd be just as ridiculous as shooting a healthy horse!"

He wanted to bite his tongue at that. He didn't like it when anyone suggested, by word or deed, that a slave was in any way comparable to livestock. He certainly hadn't meant it like that. He had only been trying to explain how foolish the notion of killing a slave really was in terms a Yankee could understand. Runaways were rare, and when a slave did try to bolt he usually only did so once. Recidivism was dealt with by selling the offender to some other plantation, or even out of state, where he might have less temptation to run. He opened his mouth to say this.

But Tate spoke first, and once again he picked up on a point completely different from the one that Cullen regretted making. "Your girl Lottie," he said. "Worth four hundred dollars on potential alone. How old is she?"

"Coming up on eleven," Cullen said, caught off-guard and unsure what the other man was thinking. "Why?"

"What's her future like?" asked Jeremiah. "Is she going to grow up to work in the tobacco fields?"

"I want her to be a house servant," said Cullen, startled into an admission he had never before made explicit. "She's a good little maid; she looks after my boy; she can learn how to cook. As she gets older she can take some of the load off of Bethel. 'Course I need her to help with other things too, but when times is better…"

"I see. That's about as good as it gets for a Negro girl, I take it? Learn how to cook, be a good little maid, help with other things, too." There was a mocking note to Tate's voice now, and the nasal quality was rising. Cullen might have taken umbrage to that, but the question struck too deeply.

"No," he admitted quietly. "On a bigger place she could train up as a lady's maid, and never dirty her hands again. Or she could be a proper mammy, not one who's got to cook and clean and pick corn as well. But I ain't got enough people to give her that kind of life. This here's the best I can do." He did not add that he wondered whether he would even be able to do _that_, the way things were going. He took his cigar from his lips and stared at its smoldering tip, suddenly tired again and ashamed. Was this the best that he could offer his folks? Was it the best he could do in life?

"And that's what her life would be on another plantation? Maybe that big place we passed on the way here, with the cotton-pickers out in the sun?" said Jeremiah.

This question, remarkably, salved Cullen's hurting pride. It was equally possible on a larger plantation that Lottie would never have come to the attention of the family at all. Certainly Boyd and Verbena didn't have ten-year-old girls looking after their children; they had three grown nursemaids under Mammy's stern command. In a crowd of two dozen pickaninnies, Lottie's potential might have escaped notice entirely.

"Maybe, maybe not," he said, and he put his cigar back into his mouth. He smiled around it. "Harder to catch the mistress's eye on a bigger plantation."

"That's right," the other man said. "On some places it wouldn't be the mistress's eye she'd catch, would it? It'd be the master's."

For a brief and blissful moment Cullen didn't follow this tidy bit of sophistry. Then his whole body stiffened against tormented muscles and he straightened up off the fence. He bit down so hard that his teeth sheared right through the slender cigar and it fell to the ground. "Hey, I ain't never laid a finger on that child!" he snarled.

Jeremiah took a step back from the wolfish rage in the other man's eyes, but his voice remained level. "I know that," he said. "You couldn't be like that, or Mary never would have given you a second glance. You're a man of honor, for all your unfortunate upbringing. But just because it couldn't happen here doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere, does it? The temptation is there for the wrong kind of man: pretty young girls completely in his power. Don't say it doesn't happen: where do the yellow niggers come from?"

Cullen's throat closed. The severed end of his cigar was still in his mouth, foul and bitter-tasting, but he could not unlock his jaw to expectorate it. Monday afternoon, he remembered abruptly. On Monday afternoon he had come into the house for dinner to find Mary sewing that dress. Lottie had just had it on for a fitting and she had been standing there while Mary took in the seam, wearing nothing but her threadbare shift. He saw her now in greater detail than he had taken in then: bare, bony shoulders and angular elbows, the gaping neckline of the garment hanging low beneath her collarbone, gangly legs bare far up on the thigh, the tiny buds of her breasts beneath the thin cloth. A child on the very cusp of womanhood, sweet and trusting and eager-to-please – and utterly in the master's power. _A temptation for the wrong kind of man._

He thought of Abel Sutcliffe, with his silken tongue and his roving eye and his plantation with its bitter crop of mulatto babies. He could see them, two and three years old on the hips of girls not so much older than Lottie, or five and six trailing behind seventeen-year-olds with empty eyes. Or Hiram, the oldest one at twenty-six with a mother not yet forty. Sutcliffe would have been about a year back from university when Hiram was born.

Cullen felt sick as his mind turned to Meg, and her fierce loyalty driven almost wholly by gratitude that he was not such a monster. Meg, who could not even take her child to spend Sunday afternoons with her father because she was afraid that Lottie would catch Sutcliffe's eye. His gorge rose and with it came the ability to open his mouth again. His tongue found the cigar-end, now disintegrating into flakes of tobacco and scraps of leaf, and pushed it out over his teeth. It fell soundlessly in the long grass.

"Do you see now?" asked Jeremiah. "The institution of slavery opens itself to these abuses. It invites the very worst parts of our nature to take advantage of the weakness of others. It is contrary to the laws of God."

Reeling though he was from his thoughts, Cullen could not let this pass. "Don't bring God into your argument," he said. "Abolitionists done that before, and a lot of innocent people died. Slavery ain't perfect; nothing Man makes is. But it ain't your place to come down here and judge us. You're happy enough to buy up our cotton and take our taxes; you're happy enough to come down here and let Bethel feed you from the garden put in by slaves. You'll let your daughter call her an African and give her cause to hurt. Then you tell me I got to change the way I live my life when all I'm doing is the best I can to feed my family and my people." He shook his head and once again, for Mary's sake, restrained the urge to spit. "You ain't an abolitionist. You're a fraud."

Tate made a terse choking noise, then took the stub of his cigar from his lips and snuffed it on the top of the fence-post. "I think we've said all we have to say to one another, don't you?" he asked with the awkward air of an inept politician caught out on a controversial topic. "I hope we can agree to let the matter rest, and to be civil with one another in the presence of our wives?"

"Huh." Cullen jerked his chin belligerently. Then he thought again of Mary, so happy to see her brother and yet so riddled with remorse over bringing him down here to burden everyone else in the household. "I'll be civil," he said, his voice cold. "But you keep your distance from my people."

"As much as I can," Jeremiah said, almost timidly. "I'm going back to the house."

"Go," said Cullen. "Tell Mary I'll be in directly."

He watched the stout shape move off, but only for a moment. For the acrid scent of burning grass assailed his nostrils and a flare caught in the lower corner of his vision. As he looked down for the source, the flame sparked by his fallen cigar flashed up a stem of indiangrass and ignited the next one.

Cursing under his breath, Cullen moved instinctively to stamp out the flame. The slipper flew from his foot and his bare sole came down upon it. Hissing in pain, he nonetheless brought it down again, and then a third time, finally landing on the offending cigar and crushing it. Breathless and reeling, he fell against the fence and slid down to the ground. He probed the bottom of his foot, still stinging with the first bright pain of a surface burn. He didn't think it was going to blister. That was the only question he could address now with any certainty. He could not muddle through what had passed between him and Tate; he could not even say who had won the argument. He was too tired, too bewildered, and too small to grapple with the great questions of the age. Dazed, lightheaded, and exhausted to the core he sat there, blinking dumbly up at the moon.

Finally, as the light in the parlor windows faded by degrees to a small, flickering flame, he got to his hands and knees, groping in the dark for the cast-off slipper. He put it on and hauled himself to his feet, gripping the fence-rails like rungs of a ladder to drag his tired body upright. His headache was back, pounding and merciless, and the dizziness was worse now than it had been after the evening chores. Swaying unsteadily and limping a little he picked his way back down to the house, knowing that Mary was waiting for him with their bedtime candle.


	29. Jeremiah's Proposition

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: Jeremiah's Proposition**

From the depths of an uneasy dream clouded with billowing smoke and embers like eyes in the darkness, Cullen heard his name. It startled him, and his sore body bucked against the firmly-packed straw of the mattress, but he did not quite wake. Then he heard it again, soft as a whisper on the wind; "Cullen…"

He moaned softly and tried to burrow into the tick, but it lacked the pliability of feathers and he only succeeded in awakening the pains in his lower back. His head shifted, nose briefly pressed into the pillow, so that he could turn towards the voice.

"Hush," Mary murmured, and he felt her fingers dancing over his brow to find his cheek. "You'll wake him."

"Why you waking _me_?" he groaned, twisting onto his hip and curling his knees in towards the middle of the bed.

"There's someone tossing pebbles at the window," she whispered.

Cullen's body stiffened again and he fumbled hurriedly to find the edge of the quilt. "Shit!" he hissed, struggling to sit up. The bed rocked with his anxious movement, but he managed to disentangle his feet and slap them down on the floor and he stood. His first step brought with it an unexpected searing agony, and he remembered too late that he had burned his left sole stomping out the beginnings of a grass fire. He stumbled to the window and bent his creaking spine to thrust his head and shoulders out over the veranda roof. His head spun and he had to clutch the windowsill to keep upright, blinking frantically to clear his vision. On the drive below stood Elijah, a tin lantern held aloft to illuminate his face.

"I'll be right down," Cullen called hoarsely, as quietly as he could while still certain he could be heard. Elijah nodded to show he understood, and in a moment the light was bobbing off back towards the tobacco barn. Cullen withdrew himself back into the bedroom, breathing shallowly as the surprise of his sudden awakening left him and his head began to pound again. For a moment he stood there, unsteady and wracked with dizziness, and then he took the three unsteady steps to clutch the footboard.

There was a flurry of disturbed bedclothes as Mary got up. She straightened her nightshirt and moved unerringly through the darkened room to the chair where his work-clothes were waiting. Before Cullen could follow her she was at his side, shaking out his trousers.

"Here," she murmured, kneeling down before him. "Right foot."

"Don't…" he mumbled, bewildered. "What…"

"Lift your right foot," she said, and now her voice was briskly urgent; she was taking control of the situation.

Befuddled and still half-asleep, Cullen obeyed, and she slipped the leg of his trouser up around his ankle. He didn't want her down there, on her knees on the bare floor, but he couldn't seem to find his voice to argue. The coarse cloth tugged against his leg, prickling through the thin cotton of his long drawers as she gathered up the other leg.

"Now the left."

He tried to lift that foot as he had the other, but his balance faltered and his heel came down again with a dull _thump. _His hold on the bedstead tightened and he leaned his hip against it as he tried again. Swiftly Mary slipped the bunched ring of fabric over his foot, and then when he did not immediately do so himself, took hold of the back of his heel and eased it to the floor. She tugged up the pants as far as his knees, and Cullen bent warily, conscious of his giddiness and of the cramping muscles of his back, to grab them. He tugged them up over his hips while Mary unfolded the work shirt and held it for him. He groped to find the buttons, but her fingers were faster. Nimbly they flew down the front of the garment, and then tucked in the tails while he fumbled with his trouser-buttons.

"There," Mary whispered. She reached up to put her palm upon his forehead, brushing back his hair as she did so. He closed his eyes under the soothing weight of her touch. "Are you certain you're well enough?" she asked softly.

"I'm well enough," he promised. "Just still—" He raised his fist to his mouth to try to stifle a yawn. "Just still wakin' up."

He hooked his thumb through the strap of his suspender and tugged it up onto his shoulder. The other was twisted, and as he struggled with it Mary's hands once again intervened. "I wish you had agreed to let Bethel take the watch, just this once," she said. "She would have done it gladly."

The arguments he had made five short hours ago rose again to Cullen's lips, but he was interrupted by a soft cooing from the bed. The straw crackled and creaked, and the faint silhouette of a small body sat up in the bed. There was a sound of plump hands patting at the covers to either side, and then a tremulous little voice called out; "Mama? Pappy?"

Had there been any light to exchange it by, the couple would have traded a look of chagrin. Neither of them had intended to wake the child, and they had each tried to be as quiet as haste allowed.

"Right here, son," Cullen said, seeing no sense in dissembling once he had been caught out. Instantly the boy was bounding on hands and knees to the foot of the bed, reaching out into the darkness and catching a handful of his father's shirt. Cullen arced his arm over the child's head as he settled his hand on one slim shoulder. Gabe pulled himself up onto his feet and hugged his father tightly. The pressure of his arms eased the band of aching fire around Cullen's floating ribs and he held the child to him for a brief, blissful moment. But Elijah was waiting to get back to his bed for his second short sleep, and Cullen was already late. He released his hold and tousled the sleep-dampened curls. "I got to go," he said. "You look after your mama, now: that's my boy."

"Where you goin'?" asked Gabe. He had a small child's amazing capacity to be deep in slumber one moment and perfectly alert the next. "It dark out."

"I got to watch the fires in the tobacco barn," Cullen said. He reached to detach the fierce little hands from his body and stepped out of the arc of Gabe's arms as Mary moved in. He passed off the child's wrists to his mother. "And you got to go back to sleep."

"I can come," argued Gabe. "I can watch a fire. I watch de fire in de parlor: it jump an' jump. Bet'l don' like me watchin' de stove: too hot."

Cullen looked into the darkness at the shape that was his wife's head. "Mary, I got to—" he began.

"Go," she said. "Gabe dearest, perhaps you can watch the fires some other time. Here, darling…" Then she grunted softly as the child climbed up over the footboard and onto her. Their white nightclothes were ghostly shapes in the faint moonlight, blurring together as Mary settled Gabe on her hip and rocked him from side to side. Fearful that if he lingered too long he would lose the will to see to his duty, Cullen hastened for the door.

"Your socks," Mary said, and she hurried after him to press the round knitted bundle into his hand.

Hurriedly Cullen kissed her and felt for the door handle. As he slipped into the hall he hear Gabe say sleepily; "Why Pappy gots to watch dem fires?"

What Mary's reply might be Cullen did not care to guess and could not stay to hear. He shuffled down the stairs, his shallowly scorched sole stinging against the abrasion of the runner. In the kitchen he sat, letting his spinning head find its equilibrium again as he tugged on his socks and then his heavy work boots. The stitches up the inner side of the left one squeaked, but he could not spare the strength to worry about the condition of his boots. Nor could he spare time to pour himself some of the coffee Bethel had once more left out. He stepped out into the dark, drawing the back door closed behind him, and set out hastily for the kiln.

Elijah was sitting on the crate, leaning indolently back against the wall as if he had not had to come to fetch the master from his bed. Cullen, breathless and trying very hard to keep himself upright despite the swirling dizziness behind his eyes, braced himself against the rough board wall.

"Sorry I wasn't down here on time," he said, straining his lungs to keep from panting. "I must've slept deeper than I thought."

"Good deep sleep wouldn' do you no harm," Elijah said as he got stiffly to his feet. "You sleep at all las' night?"

"Some," said Cullen. The old man moved toward the door and the younger one was able to ease himself down onto the crude seat. He leaned forward over his lap, elbows on knees, and hoped that the posture looked more pensive than desperate. "Elijah…" he breathed, then could not continue.

"You wan' me to take a turn picking," the slave said, dark eyes knowing.

Cullen nodded, conceding his defeat and feeling another small part of his spirit shrivel. "Bethel won't let me out to work otherwise," he confessed.

"Bethel a wise woman," said Elijah. "I see'd you sickening today. It only goin' get worse if you don' take some kind of rest. I guess holdin' that pole the closest you can get this time of year. We only got two more rows of lugs, then it on to the prime stuff."

He gestured up at the leaves. "These here don' need much longer to cure. I 'spect we can move them after dinner tomorrow an' give Lottie a rest: lay in the next batch. These is goin' need to sit a day or two before they's ready to pack, unless we gets rain. Crumble away in our hands otherwise, the weather been so dry."

"You think they're curing right?" asked Cullen, tilting his head to look at the eerie shadowed mass illuminated faintly from below.

"Couldn't do no better," Elijah declared. "Nawsir, even in the old days, we couldn' do no better 'n this."

Cullen could not help a low sigh as his anxiety abated, just a little. "Good. That's good. You get on to bed, now. Don't worry about the wood: I'll fetch more if I need it."

Elijah inclined his head and took his leave, and Cullen sat alone cradling his sore head in his hands and breathing the fragrant hardwood smoke and watching over the first measure of his harvest, all but ready at last.

_*discidium*_

When Mary rose to put Gabe down for his afternoon nap, Jeremiah got to his feet as well.

"I think I might take a walk," he said. "I've been sitting idle far too long, in trains and parlors and steamer cabins. Would you mind it terribly, Mary Beth?"

"Of course not," said Mary sweetly. Gabe was tugging on her hand, forcing her to bend to one side. He was tired after his early awakening: he had not fallen asleep as promptly as she had hoped. She was really rather sleepy herself, and would have happily settled down to nap with him if not for the guests. Bethel had Lottie to help her in the garden today, for Cullen and the field hands were moving out the first rods of cured tobacco and the girl was not needed to watch the fires. "There is a lovely footpath down towards the west edge of the property; if you wander too far you'll be on Ainsley land, but I know they won't mind so long as you keep to the woods and don't trouble the pickers. Or the creek bottom is lovely this time of year."

"I'll find my way, I'm sure," said Jeremiah. He chuckled. "Looks like this little man is eager for his bed."

Gabe froze, realizing he had captured the guest's attention, and then scuttled close to Mary's skirt. Mary excused herself and led her boy into the safety of the front hall. He scurried eagerly up the stairs and settled in the big bed with good-natured eagerness. He was asleep almost at once, leaving Mary with no excuse to linger. She returned to the parlor to discover that her brother had already taken his leave and she was left alone with Frances and Missy. The child was sitting on the récamier, picking a knot out of the sampler she was stitching. Frances had resumed her lacemaking. The fine needles clicked together so swiftly that their brightness was almost a blur. Mary took Lottie's dress, now wanting only its buttonholes, from her sewing basket and sat down gracefully.

"I fear you must be so very bored here, Frances," said Mary. "Is there anything I can do to make your stay more enjoyable?"

"It does seem to be a very quiet life you lead, my dear," said the older lady. "I'm astonished you can adjust to such rural surroundings, brought up as you were at the very center of the world!"

"I am sure the good people of London and Paris would disagree with that statement," said Mary demurely. "New York is a wonderful city, but it can surely not make such a claim."

"Well, the center of the country, certainly," said Frances. "I have always found it to be the very heart of culture and refinement. I do wish that Jeremiah was not so set upon remaining in Bangor. It was lovely, of course, when the children were young and I wished to be near my dear mother. But now… There's much greater scope for business in New York than there is in Bangor, and Jeremiah and Samuel might accomplish so much together."

The thought of her two brothers working side-by-side made Mary smile. Jeremiah had never thought much of Samuel, and his decision to distance himself from their father's business interests had been driven in a large part by that. And, of course, by the fact that Jeremiah valued his own independence and had, as the second son, the luxury of indulging it. "I really don't think they would make much of a success of it, Frances," she said. "And after all, Jeremiah's interests are flourishing in Maine, are they not?"

"I suppose they are." Frances made a thoughtful little bud with her pale lips and tilted her head as if an idea had just occurred to her. The motion was a little too theatrical, and her tone of mild astonishment just a little too contrived. "But do _you_ never miss it, Mary darling?" she asked sweetly. "I mean you must feel positively _buried_ here, with no one to talk to and nothing to do all day! You said you are friendly with these people the Ainsleys… but Mary, you have _dozens _of friends in New York and they're all simply perishing with longing to see you. Why, when I wrote to Nell Lewis that we were coming down to visit she very nearly begged me to let her stow away in one of our trunks! If you came back to visit you would be positively doted upon, my dear!"

Mary smiled at the thought of her old companions. Nell Lewis had been a year above her in finishing school, and they had always been friendly but never intimate. But there were others, like Nancy Whitman and Ada Price, whom she missed dreadfully at times. She had such happy memories of going to fétes and parties with them, of Christmas balls and skating excursions and boating trips on the Hudson, of lying awake all three in one big bed at an overnight gala at a friend's estate on Staten Island as they giggled until dawn. She remembered, too, the wide range of reactions from her girlfriends when she told them of her engagement. Some, like Ada, were simply effervescent with delight and just a little cheerful, vicarious envy of her dashing Southern intended and the adventure of marrying such a man. Others, Nell Lewis among them, had been horrified at the notion of abandoning the glister of Manhattan's social world for the veritable Dark Continent of Misssissippi. Most had fallen somewhere between these two extremes, but all, Mary thought, had been sorry to see her go.

"It would be very pleasant," she said. "Perhaps in another year or two, when Gabe is a little older. It is such a long journey, as you no doubt have found, to stay only a week or two."

"You could stay longer than a week or two," Frances said eagerly, and once again her tone betrayed that this conversation was moving in precisely the direction she had hoped to lead it. "You could stay for a month. Or a season. Or even a year or two. Mr. Bohannon was very successful in business during your courtship, so I understand. Samuel has certainly always spoken very highly of him."

Through old family connections chiefly relating to his grandfather's association with the Mobile and Ohio railroad Cullen had gained ready entry into the world of shipping finance. Mary's father had been instrumental in giving the young man the appropriate introductions, and Cullen had both proved very adept and deported himself well. At the time only Mary had known how dissatisfied he was with the petty wrangling and the internal politics of the company with which he had been employed as a clerk. He had only stuck with it as long as he had to have an excuse to linger in New York and to frequent the Tate home as he paid court to her. It was ridiculous to think of him ever returning to such a life.

"Yes, I believe Cullen did please his employers, but he did not much enjoy the life," said Mary. "He is far too vital and energetic to spend his days behind a desk, working his way slowly up the hierarchy of a city corporation. He has neither the patience nor the tact that have made Jeremiah so extraordinarily successful; he would not progress quickly enough to keep himself occupied."

"He might try it at least," said Frances. "Or he could turn his hand to something else. Banking, perhaps. Or estate development. The island is fairly burgeoning with new growth, Mary: every time we visit there is some splendid building just finished, or some new endeavor started. Or he could always find a position with the railroad: you know your father would see he was well-placed."

Mary laughed. She could not imagine her spirited and impatient husband navigating the offices and boardrooms of a railroad firm. He had found the cronyism of the shipping companies too much to bear. The railroads, with their almost incestuous ties to state and local governments, their influence in Congress and their unwieldy webs of hidden power concealed behind the stockholders, would drive him mad! She tried to picture him in a stiff collar and a fine English suit, offering a back-door inducement to a Senator or showering sugary flattery upon the Governor of Illinois, and she could not help but giggle.

"Frances, don't be silly!" she said. "Cullen would be miserable in such a position. And in any case his independent spirit would hardly allow him to accept such favors from my father. It was only possible last time because he was young and inexperienced and eager to explore New York."

"He might try it for your sake," Frances argued. "He couldn't be any more unhappy there than you must be down here. And what about your sweet little boy? Do you really want him growing up in a place like this, without any proper schools or clubs or opportunities to meet the right sort of children? My goodness, Mary, it's already having an effect on him! Dear…" She leaned in conspiratorially, hiding her mouth with her hand as if Missy could not still hear every word. "Dear, he speaks just like one of the slaves!"

She said this with the mournful air of one imparting a horrifying but unavoidable truth, and Mary found her spine stiffening. It was only with an extraordinary effort that she managed to keep her voice light and her smile sweet as she thrust down this absurd accusation.

"Don't be silly, Frances," she said charmingly. "Gabe sounds just like his father."

The pale cheeks flushed and Frances looked abashed. "That's really what I meant, dear," she said crisply.

_*discidium*_

The clouds that had been hanging low in the northern sky seemed to be creeping closer. At least Cullen devoutly hoped they were. They were big, dark thunderheads, shrunken to an ethereal range of aerial hillocks by distance but growing, so he thought, to rocky buttes. Each time he and Nate came out of the south side of the barn with another pole of yellowed leaves ready for curing, he stole a glance at the sky. Yes, he was certain they were moving, though by what means he could not say. The air was very still and heavy: there was not a breath of wind to break the heat. It was thunderstorm weather, all right, and a good hard downpour would soak the roots of the tobacco plants and give them the water they needed for the last push to perfect readiness. It would also, as Elijah said, speed the resting of the first batch of lugs. When freshly cured tobacco was too brittle to handle – almost too brittle to be moved even on the rods and by the most cautious of handlers, but the Bohannon establishment had only one kiln and it was needed to cure the rest of the crop. So for each fresh rod they brought in they had to take a finished one out, moving with mincing steps that put an ache in their hips and wore on their patience. On the drying side the rails had to be hoisted and set with exquisite care. An abrupt jostle might tear a stem right off the pole. It took a day or two for the leaves to settle so that they could be safely packed in the condition the inspectors for the New Orleans buyers demanded. A rainstorm at the right time shortened that process to hours.

Cullen had passed a long and painful morning holding the pole while Elijah picked. He had thought it would be a welcome change, standing upright instead of stooping, but the opposite proved true. Every muscle in his back, his chest and his shoulders and his neck rebelled against the sudden straightness. The slow anguish that burned in his kidneys as he bent and bowed had deepened to a grinding fire as he stood upright. His calves and hamstrings burned at the unexpected stretching, and he thought he could look forward to a harsh awakening in the throes of fearsome cramping that night. He had tried to keep his weight off his left foot, but his sole alternately stung and itched so maddeningly that he was tempted to tear off his boot to scratch. Worst of all, he knew that when he got back to picking he would have to suffer through a host of fresh miseries as his body readjusted again.

At least his headache was fading a little and he no longer felt so dizzy. He had been mortally afraid he might succumb to his nausea and the persistent malaise of the tobacco sickness, and swoon away as he had done before. Such a show of weakness would have hurt what confidence his slaves still had in him. It would have also meant being hauled back to the house filthy and debilitated and carried up to bed in full view of Jeremiah Tate. And most unbearable, it would have been a crippling blow to his self-respect. He hated this weakness even more than he hated his incompetence, and he was increasingly helpless against either of them.

It was about five o'clock when they finished rotating the poles, and the four of them gathered at the woodpile by the tobacco barn to bring in fuel to relay the fires. The work had cost them four hours of picking, but that also meant that Lottie had four hours of fresh air and sunshine, helping Bethel in the garden. Cullen wished there were more people on the place so that the child wasn't forced to be out here from dawn 'til dusk five days a week, and Saturday mornings, too. Lottie didn't complain, but Cullen knew how tedious it was to be stuck with the same task day in and day out. A little variety was better. Towards the end of the month when the leaves were all picked they would be able to spell her off, but that was still at least three weeks away. More, maybe, if those clouds didn't come any nearer.

But as he looked up again he saw that they were very near now indeed. They towered like vast young mountains over the north pastures, moving swiftly and silently through the still air high above. Their bottoms were almost black and heavy with rain, and beneath them in the distance he saw the smoky streaks that meant they were giving up their bounty to the thirsty earth. The sun was masked now behind the lead tendrils of the storm-head, and the sky to the east and west was filled with smaller clouds. These caught Cullen's eye first for their jaundiced hue, and held it because of their strange shape. They were small and perfectly round, like clay marbles spread across the dome of the heavens. He craned his neck although the joints creaked, and squinted up at the clouds.

"Elijah!" he called. The old man, who had been piling wood in Meg's arms, looked up at his master. Cullen pointed skyward. "What you make of them clouds?"

"Storm's a-brewin'," said Elijah. "Big one. Goin' be loud. We might wan' bring in the stock: them mules don' much care for thunder, an' it'll sour the cows' milk. Might even make Flora drop her calf."

"Then we're going to get rain?" Cullen asked eagerly. For the first time in recent memory his spirits were lifting.

"Oh, we goin' get rain," Elijah agreed.

Cullen grinned. "Get that wood inside then, and let's see to the stock. Meg, you good to round up the cows on your own?"

"Yassir," she said. She too was smiling. "I do it ev'ry night."

"Good. Nate, you come help with the mules: Elijah, get them fires going again. I'll send Lottie down soon as Bethel's done with her. Quick now: I'd sooner drive a dry mule than a wet one!" Cullen restrained the urge to clap his hands. The clouds were moving so quickly that he could see them at it now, and for miles behind they trailed, as far as the eye could see.

The wood was laid by hurriedly and Meg hitched up her skirts and ran off towards the pasture with more vivacity than she had any right to muster after the hard long weeks of unending toil. Cullen moved off in the opposite direction with Nate two paces behind, and as he crested the rise and moved down to the house, the first shockingly cold and deliciously welcome drops of rain fell, rolling down over his cheekbones and splashing his grubby hands and leaving dark spots on the cloth of his shirt. He found himself smiling like a child. Rain was the last boon of Providence to let them bring in the whole rich, healthy, top-price crop.

_*discidium*_

Mary sat upon the sofa with her needle motionless in her hand, watching as Jeremiah lit a cigar and tossed the match into the empty fireplace. He had come back from his walk declaring that it looked like rain, and Frances had used his arrival as a convenient excuse to retreat upstairs. She had done so under the pretext of lying down for a little rest before supper, but Mary suspected she merely wanted to distance herself from their uncomfortable afternoon. The spiteful remark about Cullen's Mississippi accent and his admittedly colloquial way of speaking had put a damper on Mary's desire to make pleasant conversation. The observation itself she would have tolerated, for Southern voices took time to grow accustomed to. But Frances had burdened the statement with such a wealth of subtext: that he was ill-bred, that he was ignorant, that he was, in fact, not merely uneducated but actually stupid, that he was coarse and low and unsuitable for Mary.

All this was unbearable enough, but she had followed it with several ill-disguised criticisms of his coarse clothing and his dirty hands and his posture. Every one of these things was a direct result of Cullen working himself half to death just to make sure they got in the tobacco and survived the winter, and it made Mary want to weep to hear him scorned for that. She was proud of him; proud of the integrity that drove him to fulfil his responsibility to his family by any means he could, proud of his courage in getting up every morning though he woke exhausted and in pain, and proud that he was able to overcome a lifetime of indoctrination in the code that a gentleman _did not_ work like a field hand. And for Frances Tate, who had never even made her own bed, to imply that he was somehow unworthy of Mary's love and devotion was too much to bear.

So they had passed the time coolly, Mary making only the necessary overtures of insignificant conversation with her sister-in-law. She had filled what might have been an awkward silence by inviting Missy to sit with her and talking to the child instead. Under the loving attention of a lady who had once, though she scarcely remembered it, been her favorite auntie, the little girl's shy primness had dissolved and soon she was talking merrily. She told Mary about her day school, about her friends in Bangor and her friends that she saw when visiting her grandparents in New York. She talked about trips to the seaside in summer, and the sleigh-rides and corn-roasts she anticipated in the winter. She gave her own lively and delighted account of the journey south; of the noise and bustle of the steamboats and the tremendous speed of the trains and the thrill of the jostling stagecoach her mother so reviled. She showed Mary her sampler, and Mary taught her how to do a tidy feather stitch. And just as they were starting to talk about horses, Jeremiah had come in. He had exchanged a quick communicative glance with his wife, and then Frances had fled, dragging a reluctant Missy with her.

Now Jeremiah came away from the hearth and sat, but he did not take Cullen's chair as he had been doing since his arrival. Instead he settled beside Mary on the sofa. He sat very near to her; almost too near even for a brother. She smiled for him and resumed her work on the buttonhole.

"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she asked as she took a neat stitch and smoothed it with the edge of her nail. "Which way did you go?"

"West a little ways, then down towards the creek," said Jeremiah. "It's a beautiful piece of land you have here, Mary Beth. A beautiful piece of land."

"Yes it is," said Mary, relieved to be once more in the presence of someone who loved her enough to find something about her life on which he could remark both honestly and favorably. "Perhaps you and I might go riding one of these days. I know the horses would be glad of the exercise; they don't get nearly enough this time of year."

"They're fine horses, too," Jeremiah said. "They seemed very levelheaded in town. Even trained city teams aren't usually so tolerant of trains: the noise and the smoke upset them."

"Pike and Bonnie are exceptionally brave," said Mary. "And Cullen could hold them steady under cannon fire."

Jeremiah's lips thinned beneath his luxuriant mustache. "Could he, now," he murmured. He exhaled slowly and studied his cigar. "Mary, I wanted to speak to you."

"You're always welcome to speak to me, Jeremiah: you know that." Mary was coming to the corner of the buttonhole and she narrowed her stitches accordingly. "What is on your mind?"

"I wasn't entirely honest when I said I wanted you to come north because I missed my baby sister," said Jeremiah.

This was a strange thing to say. Mary looked up. "Oh?" she said.

"The truth is…" Jeremiah took an abortive puff of smoke and let it out all at once. He shifted uncomfortably and looked down at the broad expanse of her skirts spread over the squashed dome of her hoop. "The truth is, Mary, that I'd hoped that once you were all in Bangor I might convince you to stay for a while."

Mary blinked slowly. "For a month," she said in a rote voice, thinking of Frances. Now she understood: Jeremiah had deliberately left them alone so that her sister-in-law could begin to broach the subject, trying to make Mary pine for home. "Or a season."

"Until Christmas at least," said Jeremiah. "By Christmas we ought to know, one way or another. I have a feeling we'll know as soon as the election's over."

"Know what?" asked Mary. She looked down at Lottie's new frock again and took three more stitches before she realized that Jeremiah was not speaking. She could feel his eyes, hot upon her neck, and when she looked up she could see the stormy tumult within them. "Know what, Jeremiah?" she whispered.

"If there's going to be a war," he said.

"A war." Mary's arms suddenly felt very heavy, and her hands fell into her lap. "You mean a war between the slave states and the free states?"

He nodded.

"But surely that wouldn't really happen," she said. "No one here wants war. They talk about the states' right to secede from the Union all the time, and how Mississippi could do it if she had to, but all that anyone really wants is to go on living their lives as they always have. It's the idea of federal interference that upsets people in the South; the idea that legislators in Washington are trying to meddle where they have no right."

"Dear Lord, you sound just like him!" Jeremiah cried. "What's he done to change you? Mary, you can't really believe this system is a just one? You haven't actually accepted this… this abomination?"

"I still believe that slavery is wrong, if that's what you're asking," said Mary, stiffening a little. "I believe it harms society and I believe it needs to end. But I've lived here almost five years now, Jeremiah. I've seen… there are good people here. Good slave owners. They aren't cruel or evil: they're simply living as their families have always lived. But they're also bright and intelligent, and they can be taught to see the world differently. Cullen says that if slavery were to be abolished gradually, and folks given a chance to get used to the idea it might work. But if Washington tries to force immediate action of course people won't stand for it; any more than people in New York would stand to have Congress telling them what they could and could not do."

"But Mary, it's contrary to Nature," her brother protested. "For one person to own another… it's obscene."

"Grandfather Howard owned slaves," Mary said quietly. "They worked in his shipyard and at the house and livery stables in Newark. He didn't have them snatched away suddenly: the new generation was freed when they'd served their apprenticeships. It gave him an opportunity to lay by money to hire workers, to alter the way he did business, to ready himself."

Jeremiah ground his jaw audibly. The cigar was burning away over his knee. He looked down at it and then got up, snuffing it out against the inner wall of the fireplace. He studied the half-smoked stub and then tossed it down after the match. "I'm not opposed to a gradual change," he said. "If that's what the state of Mississippi intends to do, at least it's a worthwhile endeavor. But I've got to say that I think Northern politicians are going to keep pushing for a quicker end, and just as you say the slave states won't like that."

"No," said Mary. She picked up her sewing again, moving the needle very swiftly. "They won't like that."

"They wouldn't even accept the duly nominated Democratic candidate," said Jeremiah. "They broke the party in two and put forward their own. Did you know that?"

"Cullen mentioned it, yes," said Mary.

"Well, what do you think these wild irrational fools will do when we elect a president they don't like? They'll break away from the country and elect their own!"

Mary thought of Boyd and Verbena's party. Almost all of the suppertime talk had circled around states' rights and property rights and the right of Mississippians to decide the destiny of their own people. A distant growling sound touched her ears and detachedly her mind registered it as the sound of far-off thunder. "Yes," she said. "I think that is very possible."

"And what do you imagine will happen then?" asked Jeremiah. "Do you think the United States are just going to smile and wave them farewell and let them go? They'll send in federal troops, Mary. They'll fortify federal garrisons. They'll try to keep the South in the Union. What do you think the South will say to that? What do you think your stubborn, independent-minded, hot-blooded Mississippi husband will say to that?

She stared at the buttonhole. The stitches seemed to vanish into the cloth and she could not see where to lay the next one. "I have to admit," she murmured; "that they certainly would not just accept it."

"No. No, they won't. They'll raise a militia and try to drive out the federal soldiers, and Washington won't order them to withdraw." Jeremiah rubbed at his temple with the side of his thumb. His eyes were dark with anguish. "There'll be war, Mary Beth. Civil war. And I'll be in Bangor, and Father and Mother will be in New York, and you'll be down here. Down here, in a _foreign country_, surrounded by people who aren't _your_ people, while there's fighting in the port cities and the border states. You'll be trapped here, don't you see that?"

"Surely it won't come to that," Mary said plaintively. She did not want to believe it. It sounded so ghastly, so unthinkable. Americans fighting Americans? Killing Americans? It would be like the Kansas uprisings all over again. She shivered at the memory of those awful days: the rumors and the fear that John Brown and his men might take their crusade across the entire South. She had had nightmares, such awful vivid nightmares, of mobs assailing their home in the night, dragging Cullen out of bed and beating him, hauling him down to the dooryard and dragging her after him, her baby in her arms, to watch while they murdered him for owning five slaves…

There was a rumble of thunder so near at hand that Mary felt in in her breastbone.

"It could," said Jeremiah. "I truly believe that it could. That's why I wanted you to come North, Mary: so that you and your family could be safe away from here until after the election. Until after we know for certain whether the country can hold together. Don't you see?"

"I see," she said. "We couldn't do it: we couldn't leave the far—plantation. You've seen how Cullen works: he's out there before dawn and doesn't come in until dark. We couldn't possibly have come to visit for two whole months, whatever the reason."

"You could come back with us," Jeremiah said. "All three of you. I've bought fares as far as Philadelphia, and then if you didn't want to go to Maine you could go to New York. Mother and Father would be glad to have you. Father could arrange for a job for your husband so you'd have money of your own coming in. We could all have Christmas together and then… then if something did happen you'd be home and you'd be safe."

Mary shook her head and forced herself to look at him. He looked terrible: haggard and anxious. His skin, until a minute ago pale, was now a ghastly, almost greenish color. Even the whites of his eyes seemed to have a greenish cast. Outside the open windows she could hear the rain pattering on the roof of the veranda, but although she had been listening for rain for a fortnight she hardly heard it now.

"We can't," she said. "We couldn't leave our people; we couldn't leave the land. The tobacco has to be picked and cured and sold; the yams brought in; the winter wheat planted. The garden… the stock… it's impossible. Cullen couldn't leave, and even if he could I'm not sure that he would."

"Then come without him!" Jeremiah said breathlessly. "You and Gabe: come and spend Christmas in New York. He can't deny you the right to visit your family, and he can't argue that he won't have you traveling alone if you come with us. Mary, you can't stay here: not if there's even a chance Mississippi might secede! Anything could happen to you: anything at all!"

Mary gazed into his tormented eyes, and she saw the big brother she had idolized as a girl. She saw the gangling teenage boy, furious because one of the Howard cousins had tugged at her curls and made her cry. She saw the young, newly-married man glowering menacingly at every boy who asked for a dance at her debutante ball. She saw her dignified, grown-up brother blotting away a tear as she sailed up the aisle towards her waiting husband-to-be. And she saw now the same irrational, possessive love he had always shown for her. He had been her girlhood champion, and he was still tilting at windmills in his battered armor. She smiled gently and reached to take his quaking hand in both her own.

"You mustn't fret so much," she said. "Even if Mississippi did secede, even if there were a war, nothing would happen to me. The care and consideration of ladies is sacred to the Southern heart, whether they're wealthy ladies or poor ladies or Southern ladies or Yankee ladies. I'll be safe here: I'll be taken care of. I told you, Jeremiah; these are good people. I have nothing to fear from them."

She patted the back of his hand and he gripped her fingers tightly. Somewhere upstairs there was a queer clattering sound. Frances must have dropped something. "And I couldn't leave Cullen, not even for a short visit. He's driving himself so hard, and all he thinks about is the tobacco. He doesn't think to take care of himself as he ought. I can't leave him like that. He needs me."

Jeremiah hung his head. "Mary Beth…"

"I know that you love me," Mary soothed; "and I love you. But I'm a married woman now, Jeremiah. My place is with my husband. This is my home now: I belong here, and so does Gabe. You mustn't—"

She stopped. There it was again: a hollow, clicking noise that came in a short burst and then was silent. Only this time it had not come distantly from above, but from the open window. Again, a rattling impact and two smaller echoes. Again. Mary twisted, her knee coming up towards Jeremiah's and her arm slipping onto the back of the sofa. She looked at the window. She realized all at once that the green tint on Jeremiah's face was not a sign of distress: the whole room was filled with greenish light, and the world outside the window was as well. Beyond the edge of the veranda roof the rain was falling heavily now, and as she watched a streak of white shot through it, and something small and pale bounced in the trimmed grass of the lawn. The queer sound came again, this time three or four echoes at once, and off the edge of the roof one of the white things came flying.

"What on earth…" Mary murmured, rising from the sofa without realizing she was standing on one foot with her knee on the cushion in a horrifically unladylike pose. Her hoop bent and billowed awkwardly, but she did not notice. She was staring dumbfounded at the window as the small white orbs pelted the ground and rang off the roof in a near-constant cacophony of sharp staccato bursts. So loud was their noise that when the next thunderclap sounded it could scarcely be heard. Jeremiah was standing now, too, and his hand moved hypnotically to settle between her shoulder blades in a gesture at once dismayed and consoling.

"Hailstones," he said in hoarse astonishment. "Mary, they're hailstones."


	30. The Storm Breaks

**Chapter Thirty: The Storm Breaks**

The mules brayed in discordant protest as Cullen and Nate drove them into the barn. The rain was falling more heavily by the second, and the men had to squint to keep their eyes from filling with it. While Nate looped halters over long, stubborn ears Cullen went out into the paddock again and whistled.

"Here, Pike! Here, Bonnie!" he called, and the two Morgans came trotting towards him. He scarcely even had to put a hand on their necks; they seemed to know just what was wanted and moved calmly into the shelter of the stable. Cullen led them into their stalls and closed the gates. Nate was still trying to get Snort to follow him. "I'm going to go fetch Lottie," Cullen said, raising his voice to be heard over the drumming of rain on the high roof. Nate nodded and kept on.

The feel of the water on his face and in his hair was a wonderful thing. It was colder than he had expected of such a still, hot day, and driving almost straight downward. Cullen moved with long, sure strides as if the budding storm were washing away his weariness as he walked. He had hoped so desperately for rain, and here it was! He felt like laughing aloud. Was this how people could find pleasure in farming? Moments like this, when after months of struggle and worry something finally went right?

He found Lottie in the dooryard, lugging a basket heavy with carrots towards the back door. He caught hold of its edge as he came up beside her, and she grinned as she shifted her hands to the opposite side so they could carry it between them. "Goin' have plenty to give the horses, Mist' Cullen," she said. "An' plenty to lay down in the cellar."

They put the basket on the back stoop under the shelter of the low-sloping roof. The door stood open, and Bethel was looking out. As she saw them approach she shifted her body to block them from the view of the little boy sitting at the worktable eating a piece of bread and butter. Cullen grinned. She didn't want Gabe running out into the rain to see his pappy, and for once he agreed with her. The rain was heavy and it was cold enough to chill him already, though he wasn't even wet through to the skin yet. It was no weather for a small boy to be abroad in. "Ain't she beautiful?" he asked in a carefully hushed voice, gesturing broadly as he set down the basket.

Bethel shook her head fondly, smiling at him, and then withdrew and closed the door. Cullen turned away from the house and jerked his head towards the tobacco barn. "Elijah's starting the fires up again," he said. "Rain or not we got to get back out in that field; you up to getting back to the watch?"

"Yassir," said Lottie cheerfully. "It be dry in there, too."

They strode off together and had just left the dooryard behind them when something stung Cullen's bare forearm. He brushed at it, expecting a yellowjacket, but his hand found nothing. Puzzled, he looked down and saw nothing either. Then he felt an impact on his shoulder, and another on the crown of his head: quick, sharp little blows that faded to a ghostly sensation almost at once. Lottie had stopped in her tracks, palms outstretched and eyes cast skyward. She flinched as a small pale orb fell into her hand, bouncing off the base of her thumb. Cullen's arm shot out and his fingers closed on it: a little round globe of ice that burned against his skin as it melted to a shrinking grey shard.

His stomach withered within him and his throat closed tight. The hailstones were falling faster now, pelting his head and shoulders and the curl of his stooped back. They were larger, too: one the size of a pea struck his wrist, leaving a sharp smarting pain behind. Cullen could not think beyond the problem of the moment, and that was that he had to get the child out of the storm before the hail got large enough to really hurt her. He swooped to catch hold of her arm and broke into a trot, Lottie's skinny bare legs hurrying to keep up with him. In a moment of greater clarity he would have turned and taken her back to the house, but his mind was whirling in a haze of confused horrors and all he could do was press forward. He felt the bite of another larger stone upon his skull, and then there was a _crack _across the ridge of his left cheek followed by the warm trickle of blood.

Flinging Lottie's hand into the grip of his left instead, he wrapped his right arm around her back, elbow against her shoulder and palm spreading protectively over her head. He pulled her close, trying to shelter her with his body as they scrambled up the hill and into the lee of the tobacco barn. Elijah was standing in the doorway, dark eyes cast heavenward and lips moving as if in silent prayer. Cullen sent Lottie to him with a firm push, and the child scuttled into the shelter of the stout roof.

"I got to see if Meg's brought in the cows," Cullen said, shouting to be heard over the rattle of hail against the barn and the dull, wet hissing noise it made as it struck the long grass.

Elijah's gaze found him slowly, and in the brief moment when their gazes locked Cullen felt a fear he could scarcely have imagined. The old man looked stricken, shaken to his very core. Hastily, unable to spare a thought for that now, Cullen turned and ran off around the stand of pines that sheltered the building from the north winds. He emerged in the pasture and cast about for signs of the cows on their picket-lines, all the while running down towards their shed. His face and hands were struck again and again, and he felt the horrible crawling sensation of a hailstone slipping through his hair and catching between his neck and collar. It burned there, a small pinion of deep cold, and he slapped at his back in an attempt to dislodge it. He came down towards the low log structure and was relieved to see Meg in the shelter of its broad door. She had her apron gathered in her hands, the coarse cloth twisted around her fingers as she watched the sky.

Another hailstone, this one as broad across as a half-dime, struck Cullen's face and blinded him in a momentary blaze of pain. Hurriedly he stumbled against the doorpost and fell in beside Meg.

"You all right?" he hollered. He had to do so, for the battering of the hail on the roof sent up such a cacophony that even at the top of his voice he could hardly hear himself.

Meg shook her head quickly, like a sleepwalker awakening unexpectedly in the middle of her journey. She looked at him with wide, startled eyes, and then seemed to recognize him. "Lottie?" she asked. He could not hear the name, but he could see the movement of her lips.

"With Elijah!" he shouted. He glanced over his shoulder to reassure himself that all three cows were safely in. They were huddled against their feed trough, trembling and lowing inaudibly beneath the roar of the hail. He turned to Meg, lips parting to say something calming, something encouraging as befitted the master. He could not think of one word to offer.

Then suddenly a shadow came chasing across the ground: a broad line of darkness intruding on the sickly green light. The day fell into a deeper gloom and the whistle of the rain picked up as the clatter died away. There were a few final _ping_s against the wooden roof, and the last spitting hailstones fell among their fellows in the grass, and there was only the rain driving cold and steady and harmless against the bruised land. The rain, thought Cullen bitterly, that he had welcomed so eagerly only a few minutes before.

They stood in silence, watching as thin rivulets danced down the slope of the pasture and melted the smallest of the bright beads of ice. Meg was hugging her crumpled apron to her belly, her eyes enormous and mournful. Cullen could scarcely breathe. There was a low rumble building to a deafening clap of thunder, and Flora bellowed in terror. This set off the other two, and the noise of the cows drowned the answering thunderclap. Cullen's shoulders twitched as a third one sounded, rending the air and bringing with it a minute's hard deluge. But he could only stare at the grass, and the larger stones still showing bright amid its autumn gold.

Beside him Meg made a sound that was neither a sigh nor a sob. She unclenched one set of fingers from its death-grip on her apron and pulled her handkerchief from her pocket. She shook it out and held it up to him. "You's bleedin', Mist' Cullen," she said with the hoarse strain of one trying her utmost not to weep.

He took the little square of well-worn cloth and dabbed at his cheek. The cotton came away stained with a bright blossom of red, but he hardly felt the sting of his split cheek or the new bruise forming on his jaw where the other large stone had struck him. He wanted to run out into the rain and up to the top field, to see what the damage was – but he was afraid. He knew that knowing would be better than wondering, however bad it was, but somehow he could not quite overcome his dread enough to make his leaden legs move. There was a brilliant flash of lightening that seemed to fill the whole sky, followed almost immediately with a crash so deep and so impossibly loud that for a moment he heard nothing but the ringing of his ears. When he could once again pick out the moaning of the cows and the thudding of the rain, Meg was speaking.

"—horses out of it?" she asked.

"Yeah, them horses got a heap of sense," said Cullen hollowly. Then he grimaced. "Dammit, I forgot about the hogs!"

"They'll take shelter their own selves," Meg reassured him. "They ain't as smart as Pike and Bonnie, but they got sense enough for that."

He was grateful to her for trying to allay his worries, but the hogs were the least of them. They could get by with a little bruised livestock, but the tobacco was something else. "I got to know," he said, his voice cracking. "I got to know."

He took a step, but Meg caught his arm before he could leave the shelter of the overhanging roof. "You ain't goin' be able to tell nothin' until the rain let up a little. No sense soakin' youself to the skin an' takin' a chill jus' to look at what you can't change now."

"But—" His protest was lost in another sundering clap of thunder and the rain roared loudly as it rose. His shirt was already drenched and sticking to his body, and he realized he was shivering. Meg was right, and he knew it. But standing here helpless and ignorant was worse than any soaking. Shaking his head he pushed himself off the post and strode doggedly out into the storm.

_*discidium*_

The hail itself persisted no longer than ten minutes, swept off southward by the same high atmospheric gales that had brought the clouds without bestirring the air upon the ground. But the rain hammered hard for nearly an hour, thunder rattling the dish dresser and sending Gabe's hands flying to cover his ears every time. Bethel was trying to keep on with fixing supper, but her motions were clumsy and distracted and she kept glancing anxiously at the door as if expecting some terrible apparition to burst through it at any moment. Gabe wanted her to hold him in her strong, lean arms; to pet him with her dark and gentle hands and to rock him in her lap and to tell him there was nothing to be afraid of. It was just a storm, that's all, she would say. He tried to convince himself, but he could not quite do it and another flash of lightning sent him tumbling off the back of the bench. His tailbone cracked against the smooth bone-pale wood of the floor, and a thin, frightened wail bubbled up in his throat only to be lost in the earth-shattering hammer of the thunderclap.

Bethel turned from the stove, dropping the wooden spoon coated thickly with a creamy sauce, and in a moment she was kneeling beside the little boy. She gathered him into her lap and hugged him tightly, and Gabe clung to her and trembled. "It loud!" he whimpered. "Why it so loud?"

He would have run to find his mother long ago, but he was too afraid to do it. Just after the hail had started, hammering so loudly on the roof that he could not even hear Bethel telling him not to be scared, there had been a scream from upstairs and the sound of thundering feet. Gabe didn't know who had screamed, or why, but that sound had terrified him even more than the thunder. If his mama was hurt or in trouble he knew he should run to help her. Pappy had told him he should look after her. But he was only a little boy and he was frightened, and he was safer here with Bethel where at least he knew what was happening.

The thought of his pappy made Gabe's frightened sobs redouble. Pappy was out there in that storm somewhere: out in the fields or the pasture. What if the lightning and thunder hurt Pappy? And even if it didn't he would get dreadful wet in that rain, and Bethel was always saying a body could catch his death of dampness. Gabe clutched at Bethel's sleeve, longing to articulate this terror in the hope that she might ease it, but he could not find the words.

"Hush there, honey. It just' old Mist' Thunder playin' his big drum in the sky," Bethel said. "You got no cause to be scared: you got a good roof over you' head an' that ol' thunder can' get you in here."

She hefted him up so that he was braced against her shoulder, and got to her feet with a low grunt of effort. Gabe hooked his leg around her hip and put his arm behind her neck. She carried him with her to the stove and resumed her work one-handed, swaying as she did so to rock him gently against her. "It all right, honey. Ev'ything all right," she soothed. "We goin' manage somehow; don' you fret. Hush now. Hush now."

He thought maybe the words were not all meant for him – or at least not only for him. But Bethel began to hum softly and he bowed his head against her collarbone so that he could feel the thrum of her throat against his brow. He hiccoughed softly and his tears began to slow to a trickle. "Bet'l?" he asked very quietly.

Just then another thunderbolt struck, but it was not as loud this time: only long and rumbly. When the sound died away Bethel tilted her head to press her cheek against his hair. "What is it, Mist' Gabe honey?" she asked.

"Is Pappy goin' get sick in dat rain?"

She raised her head and thrust it back upon her neck to look at him. "Where you get that idea?" she asked.

"You don' let me play in de rain 'cause you say I goin' ketch my deff," he whispered. "Is dat what goin' happen to Pappy?"

"No, honey, no," Bethel said. The words were consoling and melodious, almost like a song themselves. "You' pappy the toughes' white man I ever knowed. Take more than a li'l rain to blow him away."

"What 'bout the t'under?" he ventured.

Bethel clicked her tongue in a gently chiding way. "Now Mist' Gabe, you _know_ that thunder ain' never hurt nobody. It ain't nothin' but a big noise in the sky. When you makes a noise, it hurt anybody?"

"No," Gabe admitted.

"Well, then!" said Bethel triumphantly. "Don' you worry 'bout no thunder. An' don' you worry 'bout your pappy, neither. What he gots to carry he been given the strength to carry, even if he don' know it. This here ain' gonna whup him. It ain'."

Once again she didn't really seem to be speaking to Gabe, but he took comfort in her words anyhow. Bethel was always right. Next to his pappy Bethel was the cleverest person he knew. He nuzzled against her, breathing in her clean sunshiny scent, and he felt his fears abating.

_*discidium*_

Mary stood in the door of the spare bedroom, staring at the broken window. The glass had not shattered, but three panes were webbed with deep cracks from the wildly flying hail. Thankfully the nursery had escaped unscathed, but there was a broken pane in her bedroom as well, and that one _had _shattered, spreading its shards across the trunk and the floor and the rag rug on Cullen's side of the bed. When her horrified transfixion had been broken by Frances's shriek Mary had been afraid that the roof had fallen in. They had had loose shingles twice that year, and although Cullen had patched the weak places it meant the whole roof was coming to the end of its usefulness. They might get on another two years, or three, or even five doing piecemeal repairs, but sooner or later the whole thing would need to be replaced. Still, she had not expected such costly damage as that now before her. Cedar shingles and tarred felt were cheaper by far than glass, and the windows would have to be fixed before winter came. It made Mary feel sick to look at them, like eyes blighted with cataracts beside the unscathed panes.

She twisted her handkerchief until the lace edging began to dig into the soft flesh of her palm. She was fighting the urge to cry. It wasn't the windows, not really. Windows could be replaced, or patched over with scraped and dried rawhide like the poor backwoods trappers did. But if the hail had fallen hard enough and large enough to crack glass, what had it done to the tobacco?

Only the knowledge that it would cause Cullen more distress than he must already be grappling with had kept her from running out to the fields the minute the rain had eased to an ordinary soaking downpour. The presence of her brother and Frances would not have stopped her. The fact that she was wearing her third and last good day-dress and her Sunday shoes would not have stopped her. Bethel's admonitions would not have stopped her. But the thought of Cullen worrying for her when he must already be in an agony of anxieties and despair was something she could not face. She would wait patiently, like a good planter's wife, for word to come from the fields. She hoped everyone had found shelter in time. The horses were gone from their paddock, so someone at least had reached the barn. And they had been working out at the kiln instead of in the fields: that was a mercy. Hailstones could be cruel: Mary had heard tell of a man actually struck by one so large and heavy that it fractured his skull. These had not been big enough to do that, surely… and yet they had broken the window.

Footsteps on the stairs behind her made her fight to compose herself. She did not want Jeremiah to see her trying not to weep. He was worried enough already by imagined demons. If he suspected the might and proximity of the real ones it was possible that he would do something rash. He might try to take her with him by force, or even to express his fears to Cullen. If he did that, she knew, he would never present them in the muddled and earnest way he had to her. He would paint a picture of desolation and play upon Cullen's desperate wish to see her happy and cared-for, and in the wake of this disaster Jeremiah might actually talk Cullen 'round.

"Mary?"

Her eyes grew wide. It was not Jeremiah, but Frances. She did not turn, but struggled to set her face into its most pleasantly placid expression. For the first time in her life she wished she had been brought up to the Southern artifice that Verbena Ainsley's mother had taught her so well. Mary had always valued forthrightness, and she knew that was what had drawn Cullen to her in the first place, but just now she would have given anything to be able to hide her feelings beneath a flawless mask of serenity.

A small, spindly hand settled on the small of her back: a shockingly intimate and unexpectedly tender gesture. Mary turned a little to the left as Frances came up beside her and settled the rest of her arm about her waist. With her free hand she reached to touch the one clinging to the handkerchief. "It's such a pity about the windows," Frances said softly. "Will they be terribly difficult to repair?"

"There's a glazier in Meridian," said Mary, not quite hearing her own words. "He can make them to size and Cullen can replace the broken panes."

"It's a blessing you have no wheat in the ground," said Frances. "Nothing ruins wheat as surely as a hailstorm."

"In Mississippi we plant our wheat in the winter." This too was hollow but courteous, covering neatly the chasm of her worry.

"Will it… will the storm have hurt your tobacco?" Frances sounded very small and oddly unhappy. Mary looked at her and saw something in her pale eyes: something that looked precisely like genuine sorrow.

"Quite likely a little," said Mary, softening. "I hope not much."

There was a hush between them. At last Frances spoke. "Mary, you know I have never been fond of Mr. Bohannon."

The breath that left Mary's lips was equal parts laugh and sob. "You've never made a secret of that."

"I thought he was selfish to take you away from us; away from your family and your friends and your whole world just to adorn some horrible plantation populated by unwilling chattel," said Frances. "I thought that any man who would ask you to sacrifice so much for love of him must be selfish, and wicked, and—"

"Please don't say any more," Mary whispered. "We've come near enough to quarrelling today. I can't… can't bear any more."

"But I was wrong," said Frances. "Last night, when he came in… his hands, Mary. They were…"

She looked down at her own white fingers cradling Mary's smooth, palely blushed ones. "He's working so hard for you. He's working like one of your niggers, isn't he? Out in the fields like one of the slaves. He didn't even come in out of the storm: he's still out there, working. Isn't he?"

Mary closed her eyes. "Don't tell Jeremiah. Cullen doesn't want him to know. He's proud. He thinks… he thinks the family will see it as a come-down for me. But it isn't. I'm happy here. Even when the work is hard, even when all we do is scrimp and scrounge and worry, I'm happy here. I want to grow old with Cullen; I want to see our children grow up and love this land and work this land and make it flourish again. I want to see the day when we can afford to give our people wages, and pay for their freedom papers, and – and buy up Meg's husband from Abel Sutcliffe and free him, too. And… and those are the things I want, Frances, and I believe we can have them. I hoped we might even make a start this year, but now I don't see how we can. Maybe next year will be better. That's what farmers say, isn't it? 'Maybe next year will be better.'"

"I understand," said Frances. "I mean I understand why you married him. I don't understand how you can possibly be contented here, but I do believe that you are. So I wanted to say that I'm sorry, Mary. Those things I said today; I'm sorry for them."

Mary nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. She put her other hand over that of her sister-in-law, and she stared straight ahead at the window with its cracks: lines of weakness laid bare to the eye and awaiting only the slightest tap to make them give way entirely.

_*discidium*_

When the rain slowed from a raging torrent to a steady downpour Nate left the shelter of the barn. The thunder still rolled, but it was not so fearsome now and the gap between the flash and the bang was longer. He was glad to be out of the stable, which stank now of fear and fresh mule piss. The animals hadn't taken kindly to the din of the hail or the thunderclaps that had seemed to shake the very timbers of the barn. Even Bonnie, usually so fearless, had pawed restlessly and shifted in her stall, even letting out a shrill, anxious whinny after one particularly savage clap. Poor patient Pike remained quiet, but when Nate went to check on him he was trembling. Nate had tried to calm him, but he didn't have Mister Cullen's knack for soothing horses and there was nothing much he could do but wait for the worst of the storm to pass.

Now he stepped out into the rain and slogged through the mud already over the toes of his boots even in the hard-packed dooryard. The rain trickled into his eyes and down the back of his collar, but he had taken off his hat to move the loaded poles and had forgotten it entirely in the eager preparations for rain. He could not even recall what that had felt like now: all he felt was a grim horror at the cruel vicissitudes of the weather and a dread of what he might find over the rise.

There was no question of going anywhere but out to the tobacco. Melting hailstones crunched beneath his boots and the cold rain soaked through his faded old shirt and began to seep into the cloth of his trousers. Nate was both alarmed and a little astonished at the fear that chased him up the swell of the land. After twenty years of bitterness he had thought he had severed his heart from the Bohannon interests, but it seemed he still had the capacity to care. Just as he had been unable to turn away from Mister Cullen when he was weak and sick and scarcely able to stand, he could not turn away from this calamity – however great or small it proved in the end. The prosperity of the plantation was one thing, but this was a question of the survival of the family, black and white alike. And it startled Nate to realize that he truly did care about the survival of the white folks, too.

As he crested the hill he stopped. A bowed figure was sitting in the wet indiangrass, knees bent and legs planted wide to keep him from sliding down into the tilled muck. The forearms were braced across the knees, limp hands dangling, and the head was hanging so low that dripping hair trailed in a draggled curtain over a face pale beneath the brown summer weathering. His drenched clothes and the stoop of his shoulders completed the picture of perfect dejection.

So ghastly was the mere reflection of the desolation of the field that for an interminable span of time Nate could not even look towards the rows. At last he tore his eyes away and forced himself to do so. The plants that had spread so broad with promise that morning looked limp and tired now. There were fallen leaves shredded and pounded into the mud, and more still hung on broken stems. Moving closer, Nate could see that the top leaves of all the near plants were pocked with holes, and one or two of the stalks had actually broken so that whole plants toppled in fractured ugliness. He stepped to the very edge of the sod and crouched to make a closer examination of the nearest specimen still upright. Some of the middle leaves were not so badly harmed with only their tips tattered, but their veins still strong and their stems still whole. But the lowest remaining leaves, the ones that were to have been picked next, the first taking of the prime harvest, were drooping and splattered with mud. He plucked one up by thumb and forefinger, trying to right it, but although the stem was unbroken the weight of the muck dragged it down again.

"It ain't all los'," he said. "They's leaves worth saving. An' the other fields might have come out better: storm was blowin' south-southeast. Comin' up it look to me like Wes' Willows goin' get the worst of it."

He waited for the master to say something, but no answer came. Nate stood up, wiping his grimy hand on the seat of his pants. Then he realized he was afraid to turn around. Losing the best of the crop was a blow. Without top price for the whole fifty acres he didn't see how they'd manage to pay what was owed and still get through the year. Still, he knew they'd manage it somehow: they always seemed to scrape by. But if this was the blow that finally broke Mister Cullen, they were all doomed. He wasn't much of a farmer, brought up by a capable planter though he had been, but his willfulness and his intelligence and his stubborn refusal to lie down and let life lick him were what held this place together. If that went, everything else would go with it. The land would be lost, its people scattered, Nate probably sold upriver by some banker eager to get a quick return, Meg and Lottie most likely separated. Bethel would go with the master, of course: even if she had to starve with him she wouldn't leave him. And Elijah? What would become of Elijah if the plantation finally failed? He was too old to have any value at auction, however tirelessly he worked.

A vista of terrors opened suddenly before Nate and he felt his hands trembling. For months he had known how the weary struggle for subsistence and the tedium of the field labor was dragging on his master, and he had cast his eyes away and closed his heart to the misery of one who had once been his friend. He had thought, in his bitter foolishness, that Mister Cullen's trials had nothing to do with him. Now he knew differently. If this latest misfortune finally crushed the master's obdurate and heretofore indomitable spirit, there was nothing left for any of them.

Gathering his courage and telling himself the truth could be no worse than this unthinkable imagining, Nate squared his broad shoulders and turned. Mister Cullen was still sitting in the same awful pose, a sodden statue of wretchedness. Nate stared at him, not daring to speak and trying with all his might not to think of the skinny white boy who had kept right on trying until he could outrun, outclimb and outswim his black companion. He tried not to remember other storms on other long-ago autumn days when the two of them would run out barefoot among the cotton rows or the tobacco plants, picking up worms to fill a rusted-out cake pan, their clothes soaked and their feet squelching and their hair clinging to their skulls as they laughed and shouted to one another. He tried not to recall summer nights lying on the big flat boulders in the top meadow, staring up at the stars and sharing the secrets a thirteen-year-old boy could only confide in his closest friend. He filled his mind instead with the long-hated image of a nattily dressed and buoyantly happy bridegroom lifting his new wife down from the buggy in her costly wool travelling gown and jade-green bonnet, triumphant and happy and oblivious to the tribulations of others. And somehow, inexplicably, that was worse.

"Ain' so bad," he croaked, his throat so tight that he could scarcely form the words.

"Bad enough," muttered Mister Cullen. His head bowed lower and his back stretched excruciatingly into the same stiffness that plagued Nate's own spine. Then he looked up, and his eyes were hard as flint and his face was set in grim lines that told Nate what he would look like a decade from now, if his cares did not age him prematurely. There was a dark wound on his cheekbone and thin blood running in the rain that streamed down his face, but his lips were steady in their thin line and there was a knot of determination in his jaw. "Can't be helped. Nothing to do but salvage what we can. Leaves off the stems are a loss, but we might be able to dry out some of the broke ones. Let's you and me check the rest of it: I thought she was blowing south-southeast, too."

Nate found that he could breathe again. He felt no joy: there was nothing in this situation to feel joyful about. But there was a hot wave of relief to warm him despite the chilling rain still soaking into his clothes, and there was gratitude also. Mister Cullen might have been dealt a bitter defeat in his war against the land, but he wasn't licked. If he still had the will to keep going they'd be all right somehow. They had to be.

He held out his hand to the man who had played with him as a child, who had gone off to university and left him in the muck, who owned his body by the law of the land. Mister Cullen looked wordlessly at the dark wrist and then clasped it, and Nate helped to haul his weary body up onto his feet again.


	31. Being Neighborly

**Chapter Thirty-One: Being Neighborly**

They were all looking to him.

Cullen could feel their eyes upon him constantly, even when he knew they must be watching their work. They were looking to him to see what to do, how to react, what to feel, and whether to despair. They were gauging his response to decide upon their own. From his countenance and behavior they would determine whether this was indeed the end of their dreams of a decent harvest and security through the winter. They would decide whether to keep trying, to keep fighting, or to lie down and give up. It was his words, his actions and his every minute expression that would allow them the comfort of hope, or condemn them to anxious misery and sleepless nights fraught with fear.

He was the master. He did not have the luxury of giving in to his own discouragement, to the shock and exhaustion and misery that wanted to devour him. He was not free simply to throw up his hands and walk away, as he longed to. He could not shout or rail or roar against the summary injustice of this last cruel barb of fate. He could not even leave his eyes unguarded, lest his anguished desolation show through. He had to keep his jaw set and his shoulders squared, and to give firm and tangible orders as he set an example of unshaken dedication to the toil ahead and the salvaging of the crop.

And there was something worth salvaging, at least. They had a third of the harvest in already, hanging on poles in the tobacco barn. Because the hail had fallen all but straight, very little had even come through the slats of the drying side, and only a few of the leaves nearest the walls were nicked. Everything in the curing kiln was unscathed. It was true that this represented the poorest part of the harvest, but it was nonetheless some consolation to know that they had a little income guaranteed. As for the tobacco still left on the plants, the damage varied hugely. The top field had borne the brunt of the storm, and they were going to lose some of it entirely. What was left was bruised and torn, and even Elijah could not say if there was any hope of it ripening more than it had done already. Of those twelve acres Cullen thought they might get perhaps half of what they had hoped to. But the damage decreased as it moved eastward up the rows, and in the next and largest field it was considerably less. There only the top leaves and the very edges of some of the middle ones were pocked and ragged. The chief trouble was the mud, splattered by the hail and by the battering rain so that it coated the lowest of the remaining leaves. They would have to be harvested immediately, ready or not, and laid in the sun to dry as soon as the rain stopped.

Providence had had mercy upon the bottom field: it was all but untouched. Where that morning they had had fifty acres of top-quality tobacco undamaged and unravaged, now there were fifteen. When he thought of it that way Cullen almost believed his sanity would forsake him entirely. But when he told himself that those uninjured plants represented almost three hogsheads' worth of prime produce and another of seconds it did not seem quite so dire. He could not even guess what they might glean from the top field in terms of quality: those calculations would occupy his nights for weeks to come. But the bottom field still had at least two hundred and twenty-five dollars standing in it; perhaps a little more. He had to cling to that piece of hasty figuring, because if he didn't he knew he would never find the strength to carry him through to nightfall.

After some deliberation between the three men, they had finally decided to attack the top field first. The rain was still driving cold and steady, and Elijah pointed out that with a little luck it would wash down the mud-caked plants in the second field. The leaves with broken stems, however, had to be cut at once. Many were not even worth saving, but if they were not pruned promptly they would sap the strength of their plants and ruin the other leaves that still had some small hope of completing their growth. There was no time to spare in stringing these on poles: the men picked into the big willow corn-baskets. There was one for leaves that could be salvaged and another for those that could not. Into this latter Meg was piling armloads of shredded mulch: leaves that had been sheared right off and pounded into the mud. She worked between the rows with a hoe, gathering this trash into heaps before carrying it to the basket. They could not simply leave them lie: they were an invitation to rot and disease, and the very last thing they needed now was for the remaining plants to sicken.

It was awful work. They might as well have been slithering in the mud on their bellies, for within minutes they were coated in it from toe to hip and fingertip to shoulder. It was entirely impossible to keep the rain out of their eyes, but somehow they could not help trying; soon faces were smeared and hair tangled with muck. As the grey daylight dimmed the air grew colder and the rain almost painfully chilled. Cullen had been soaked long before they began, after sitting numbly in the deluge while the thunder clamored above, and soon enough the others were in an equally wretched state. They were all shivering, and after a time their noses began to run. Slippery hands could not adequately grip the knives, and again and again one of the men would hiss in pain as the blade slid and bit into the flesh of thumb or palm. Meg's basque was smeared with clumps of mud and plastered with scraps of tobacco leaves, and after a while she just picked up the front of her skirt and filled it with the rubbish. Her petticoat was black to the knees.

Added to these were the usual miseries of picking: sore backs and burning shoulders, elbows that ached so that a man was tempted to drive his knife right into the joint, and the sickening agony in the kidneys. Cullen's headache had returned seeking vengeance, and he could not be sure whether it was a result of the cold and the strain, or if he had not yet recovered from the nascent tobacco sickness of yesterday. As the sooty clouds on the western horizon began to take on an orange cast he found he was almost nauseated with hunger. As his worries should have left him no quarter to think of food he imagined the others must be twice as famished as he.

They had cleared eight rows of the deadfall when Meg straightened swiftly from emptying her skirt into the basket of waste. Cullen's eyes were drawn by the sudden movement and his head tilted painfully to look up at her from his stooped position.

"What is it?" he asked, his voice creaking hoarsely. With water a misery all around him he had neglected to think of pausing for a drink.

"Rider," she said, pointing. "Look."

He could not look without straightening, and so he finished cutting the broken stems. The leaves that looked worth saving he laid carefully in the gleaning basket, and flung the rest after Meg's load. Then he stood, his palm flying to the small of his back as an excruciating cramp rippled across his spine. Blinking the rain from his eyelashes he squinted at the dark shape galloping along the rise from the direction of the road. The horse was tall and thickly muscled: a hunting Thoroughbred that Cullen did not immediately recognize. Slogging through the mud in a mortifyingly ungainly fashion, he clambered up onto the wet sod as the beast drew near. The rider was wearing a dark greatcoat that flapped behind him with the wind of his passage, and he swung from the saddle almost before the horse was reined to a halt. Water dripped from the brim of his hat and rolled over the thick wool on his slender shoulders. It was Boyd Ainsley.

"I thought I'd find you out here," he said. "Is it bad? I came as quickly as I could get awa—Dear God."

He was looking at Cullen, taking in his mud-streaked pallor and his matted hair, the thickly plastered and sodden clothing and doubtless the shivering that he could not quite hide. Unable to face his friend's pity, Cullen chose to misunderstand. "Ain't as bad as it looks," he said. "Once we clean out the broken plants and the fallen leaves it'll be all right. The bottom field didn't get more than a good soaking."

He did not add that a good soaking was all the crop had needed; everything he had hoped for; and that he had been fool enough to rejoice at the sight of the thunderheads.

Boyd's lips tightened and his eyes were mournful, but he nodded. "Always looks worst right after the storm," he said with obvious effort. "Our east field looks like it was trampled by a hundred head of stampeding cattle."

"You going to lose much?" asked Cullen, realizing suddenly that perhaps his own yield was not the only one abruptly decimated today. Full-grown cotton plants were not as vulnerable as tobacco to hail, but the ripe boles themselves were easily dislodged even by a moderate rain.

"About fifty acres," said Boyd, dismissing an area equal to Cullen's whole crop with a waft of his hand. "Not bad. Of course the rest of it will have to wait to be picked until the rain stops and it dries out, but I'm going to need most of the field hands to clean up the mess anyhow, so that's not really time lost."

From the pocket of his coat he took a silver flask and held it out to Cullen. He moved as if to reach for it and then saw his befouled hands and gestured helplessly. Boyd shook his head. "Don't matter," he said. "Go on: it'll warm you."

Cullen took the vessel and pulled out the stopper, tipping it to his lips. It was the very finest Scotch whiskey, and its convivial amber fire trickled down his scratchy throat and suffused his chest with a memory of wellbeing. He closed his eyes, savoring it, and then took another little nip. He handed it hurriedly back to Boyd before he could cave to the temptation to drain the whole thing. "I appreciate it: thanks," he said.

Boyd took a drink himself, and gave his head a little shake. He looked out over the field, and Cullen followed his gaze. He did not linger on the long rows of destruction – so many, many rows, and how could the four of them possibly clear them all before rot set in and ruined what was left? – but looked instead to where the others were still working. Elijah was stooping, and Nate just rising to move down to the next plant. Meg was far down the row, working cautiously but quickly with the hoe. Every one of them was just as cold and miserable and discouraged as he was.

He turned back to Boyd, a question on his lips, and then hesitated. It was unthinkable to ask another man to share his best liquor with a slave; almost obscene to the Southern mind for white and black to drink from the same vessel. Cullen tried to dismiss the ridiculous thought, but found himself dismissing convention instead. He might well offend Boyd, and brand himself forever as a nigger-lover, but he had to do it. They were his people, and he owed them whatever he could do to alleviate their suffering. It was little enough.

He gestured at the flask. "Boyd, do you mind?" he croaked. "It's… could… may... my people. They could all do with a mouthful."

As he had expected the other man's jaw slackened, but remarkably Boyd held out the flask. Startled, Cullen took it, fumbled with the stopper, and then paused to consider. Asking for such a favor was audacious enough: allowing his Negroes to drink from another man's flask was too much. Nodding his head in a curt gesture of thanks, he went over to the drinking pail and took out the dipper, emptying it and shaking it off. With the rain still falling there was no hope of getting it dry, but that didn't matter. A little water didn't hurt whiskey any. He tipped a measure of the golden liquor into the dipper: enough for each of his slaves to have a mouthful. Then he shuffled to the edge of the field.

"Nate!" he called, holding out the ladle. The black man straightened, frowning, and his eyes grew wide as he saw the flask and the outstretched vessel. He scrambled through the mud, and Cullen handed him the dipper. "Share this 'round," he instructed. "Compliments of Mr. Ainsley."

Nate stared down into the bowl as if he did not quite believe what he was seeing. "Thankee," he mumbled. Then he raised the dipper carefully in salute and called to Boyd; "Thankee, Massa: it be mighty kind of you."

"You're welcome, son," said Boyd with admirable good-nature. "Enjoy it."

Cullen hurried back to return the flask to its owner as Nate moved down the row to give Meg the first taste. Replacing the stopper, Cullen handed it back to Boyd. "Thank you," he said, suddenly abashed. "It's just… they're cold, too."

Boyd waved a hand to show he understood. He studied his friend's face, brow furrowed. "Is there anything else I can do to help?" he asked. "By way of being neighborly?"

A polite denial hovered on the tip of Cullen's tongue, and then melted on the rain. The truth was that there _was_ something Boyd could do, if he was willing, and if Cullen was not too proud to ask. Even if the four of them worked all night by the light of pine knots, they'd never clear the damage before the detritus began to decay, and they had to start cutting the muddied leaves in the next field as soon as possible, too. Swallowing his yearning to prove himself self-sufficient, he nodded.

"What would you charge to hire a couple of your field hands for a day or two?" he asked. "Just to help clean this mess up."

"You can have them," Boyd said immediately. "Free of charge. I'll send over three of my best boys first thing tomorrow: you just feed them dinner and supper, and don't put them to work doing anything too dangerous, all right?"

Cullen shook his head. "No. I'll pay you what they're worth. Fifty cents each a day? Is that still the usual rate?"

"Take them," said Boyd. "I won't have a use for everyone until the cotton dries out. They'd only sit idle otherwise."

Cullen did not believe this for a minute, but he could hardly call his friend a liar. "I'm still going to pay you," he muttered.

"I won't accept it," Boyd warned. "I know you'd do the same for me."

There might have been some truth in this, if it was even possible that their positions should ever be reversed. And if he paid out a fair hire on two days' help from three men, Cullen would be left with less than ten dollars in cash – not counting what little he had keeping his good standing with the bank. Closing his eyes against the irrational feeling of shame he nodded again. "I thank you," he said. "You're a good neighbor."

"It don't cost me nothing," said Boyd. He clapped Cullen companionably on the shoulder, raising an unpleasant squelching sound from the mud-soaked cloth of his shirt. "Maybe when you get all this laid by you'll send me a dozen of them cigars of yours?"

A hoarse laugh surprised Cullen. "Four dozen," he promised. "More if I wind up with some odd tonnage." The mere fact that he had just used the word _tonnage_ with respect to his crop seemed to comfort him a little. He managed a shaky smile. "Thank you, Boyd. I mean it."

"I know you do," said the taller man, grinning. He raised his flask and quaffed, then handed it to Cullen again. Hesitating only an instant he drank, and gave it back to its owner.

"I got to get back," said Boyd. "It occurs to me that my men might take kindly to a drop or two of liquor, too. Not this stuff, of course—" He gestured with the little silver bottle. "—but I got some good Kentucky brew that ought to answer. I thank you for the idea: it'll keep 'em working happier." He tilted his eyes skyward, sending a shower of water off the back of his hat. As he did so, he tucked the flask into his pocket, tactful enough not to wipe the mud from it first. "Wonder when she'll blow on."

Cullen tilted his head in an approximation of the shrug his sore shoulders could not endure. "I'll expect your men tomorrow. With a bit of luck I'll only need them the one day."

"You can have 'em as long as you need," said Boyd. He got his foot into the stirrup and paused. "Verbena keeps asking when we can invite you and Mary to supper. I told her it ain't convenient this month; is that right?"

"Don't have time for supper at home," said Cullen, hoping he did not sound too truthful. "But Mary was thinking of dropping in some afternoon next week. Her brother and his family are down from Maine: their little girl's a year younger than Miss Charity."

"She'd be welcome. They all are," said Boyd. "Why don't you try to spare an evening and dine with us? We'd be proud to entertain your company."

"We'll see," Cullen said noncommittally. It was quite impossible: he wouldn't have time to sleep, recovering from this calamity, much less go calling. "Good day to you, then."

"Good day," said Boyd as he swung into the saddle. He paused, casting Cullen one last unmistakably anxious look, and then wheeled the horse around and cantered away. Cullen watched for a few polite seconds, and then fixed his face with a look of firm determination. He turned and dragged himself back down into the mud.

_*discidium*_

Frances was setting the dining room table while Mary stood in the kitchen, mashing the potatoes with a generous measure of cream. The promise to sit idle could not be upheld under such grave circumstances as these. When she heard the fall of Bethel's shoes on the stoop her heart leaped to her throat. Bethel had gone to pick some parsley and to check on the damage to the garden. Mary did not know if she would dare to wander as far as the tobacco, but she did not think so: Bethel's presence would be almost as upsetting as her own, and they both shared a fervent wish to spare Cullen what distress they could.

The old woman came in out of the rain, shaking off her shawl and wiping her shoes with care. She had the sprig of herbs in her hand, but it was droopy and rather sorry-looking. Her face was unreadable and her eyes were grave.

"Well?" Mary said breathlessly.

"Nobody don't hardly need to mow down the corn stalks," said Bethel. "They's toppled and torn an' broke in half. Leave 'em dry an' then burn 'em; tha's all. No great loss without some gain."

"And the garden?" asked Mary.

Bethel shrugged. "It ain' pretty, but it could be worse. The greens is tore up bad, an' some of the tomatoes is burst. The rest goin' be bruised: we got to pick 'em quick an' lay in preserves before they rot. The pumpkins an' the squash don' look so bad: the leaves took the worst of it. The herbs is raggedy but mos'ly all right."

"The peas?" asked Mary. "The beans?" The long rows of vines had been carefully watered and tended all summer, waiting for the pods to mature and dry: they were relying on them to supplement what might well be a lean winter diet. If they had to purchase stores to replace them…

"Los' a few, but they's mos'ly still young an' green," said Bethel. "I think we goin' get a good harvest. An' all the roots goin' be jus' fine: yams, potatoes, onions, turnips, what lef' of the carrots an' parsnips, all."

Mary breathed a little easier. It might have been so much worse. Certainly she had been imagining worse.

Bethel rinsed the parsley and began to chop it. "Checked the trees, too," she said. "Peach trees los' a lot of leaves, but they'll heal up by spring. An' the walnuts is falling in heaps. They's ready, though: skins split. In the mornin' I'll set out in the barn to watch them fires, an' Lottie can gather up the nuts. All that stoopin' would do my back in sure. See, Missus Mary? That goin' spare us climbing the ladder to shake 'em down, at least the firs' batch. 'Nother li'l blessing."

It seemed such a very small blessings, but Mary tried to smile. "And… is there any other damage?"

"Whitewash is spoilt, but the fences needed redoin' anyhow," said Bethel. "An' there be a hole in the henhouse roof. I stuck a piece of oilcloth over it to keep out the rain for now. I didn' go farther than the well," she said in response to Mary's unanswered question. "We's goin' have to wait an' see what Mist' Cullen think 'bout the tobacco."

Mary nodded, pounding the last of the lumps from the potatoes. "Would you hand me the pepper-pot, please?" she asked.

From the dining room the clatter of silverware suddenly resumed, and Mary realized belatedly that her sister-in-law had overheard their entire conversation. She was torn between feeling touched that Frances cared enough to listen, and anxious lest they had said something uncircumspect. She did not think that they had, and the account of the damage to the garden was surely harmless enough. Frances's unexpected show of empathy and genuine compassion had left Mary bewildered but touched, and her offer to help lay on supper was all the kinder for her lack of experience with domestic chores.

Still the meal was quiet and uneasy, and the sunset hour in the parlor a long and miserable one for Mary. She tried to make courteous conversation, but all the while she was listening for the sound of the kitchen door. Bethel had brought in water while the white folks ate, so that she could have a hot bath waiting when Cullen finally came in. But night fell and time crawled on and still there was no noise from the kitchen to indicate he had done so. Finally Frances excused herself and went upstairs to prepare for bed. Bethel had mixed up a batch of flour paste and affixed squares of brown paper to the broken panes of glass lest they should crack further and fall. The hole left in the bedroom window by the shattered glass was covered with a scrap of tarpaper as a temporary measure. Cullen would have to decide what he wanted to do. They could not afford new glass now, and might not be able to meet that expense even after the tobacco was sold – if there was any tobacco left to sell. Mary tried to put that fear from her mind and to focus on what Jeremiah was saying about the sinking of a steamer on Lake Michigan.

When she heard the distant _thud _of the back door, she was on her feet and out of the room almost before she could make her apology. She was dimly aware of Jeremiah looking bewilderedly after her, but she had only one desire at that moment. She sped through the dining room, her hoop catching on one of the chairs and dragging it out of place, and flung herself into the kitchen, closing the door swiftly behind her.

Cullen was already well into the room, sitting in Bethel's chair which had been drawn from its usual corner right up to the stove. He was huddled close by the hot iron surface, his lean body bundled into an old quilt. Bethel was standing just behind him, carefully pouring something that looked like coffee out of a saucepan into a china cup. As the vapor from the steaming liquid filled the air Mary could smell cloves and what was likely almost the last of the cinnamon. The brandy-bottle was on the table, and Bethel added a generous measure to the cup, stirring vigorously. She offered it to her master, who worked one filthy hand out of the blanket and curled his fingers around the hot china with an almost inaudible sigh. His eyes were vacant and his hair, dripping and clotted thickly with mud, straggled down to obscure his face. It too was dirty, streaked with grime and tobacco juice. He lifted the cup close under his chin and breathed in the scent.

"It too hot to drink," Bethel warned. "You goin' burn your tongue. Jus' hol' it an' get the warmth of it. Do you good."

Cullen nodded unsteadily and shifted in the chair so that he was still nearer the stove. He was shivering and his lips were pale: he looked wretchedly cold. Mary realized abruptly that his feet and legs were bare, and all of his arm that she could see from where it emerged from the quilt. He must have stripped off his clothes outside to keep from tracking mud into the house. She came further into the room, skirting the waiting tub.

Bethel brought down the rusted old dishpan that was no longer used for its intended purpose, and set it before her master. She emptied half a bucket of well water into it, and followed this with the contents of the copper kettle bubbling on the stove. She stirred the fluid with her hand, testing its temperature, and then pushed it closer to Cullen. "Put your feet in there," she instructed. "You goin' eat before you wash."

"Yes ma'am," Cullen mumbled. He was staring into the toddy, its dark surface rippling as he shivered. He did not seem to have registered his wife's presence at all. He lifted his right foot slowly, struggling to keep himself covered with only one hand to grip the blanket. Bethel nodded approvingly as he lowered his heel into the water and then shifted the other foot.

Mary took another tentative step forward, and the older woman looked at her. Mary raised an eyebrow in a silent question. Bethel, understanding perfectly, shook her head. She had not yet asked about the damage to the tobacco.

Cullen lifted the cup to his lips and sipped cautiously, then closed his eyes and took a longer draught.

"We should take some of that down to the cabins," Mary said. "I'm sure the others would take some good from it, too."

"I already sen' some with the supper," said Bethel in an unmistakably approving tone.

At the sound of Mary's voice Cullen looked up, and his grip on the blanket tightened. She mustered her gentlest smile. "How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Dog tired," he said, and drank again. He blinked slowly as though to clear a fog from his mind. "Did Boyd stop by the house?"

"Boyd Ainsley?" asked Mary. "No. Why would he?"

Cullen jerked his head noncommittally. "He rode out to the field to check on our damage," he said. "Thoughtful of him."

"They get it bad over Wes' Willows way?" asked Bethel.

"Sounds like it: they lost fifty acres of cotton, and the rest is soaked. Boyd seems to be taking it in stride, and why not? He's got six hundred more waiting to pick: they won't be hurting too badly." Cullen grimaced and added softly; "He's sending over three men to help us for the next day or two."

Mary debated whether to speak. He might come out with the news on his own, but addled as he no doubt was with fatigue and shock he might not. He might even keep it from her willfully under a misguided attempt to spare her worry. Quietly she said; "Is it serious, then?"

He looked up from the basin at his feet, eyes stricken for a moment before they hardened. "It's serious, but it could be worse. The top field's ruined: what isn't lost is damaged enough to harm the price. But the big field isn't so bad and the bottom one's pretty much untouched. We'll still have a harvest. It ain't what we hoped for, and it ain't what we've earned, but it's something."

A band she had not even noticed suddenly loosened from around her ribs and Mary drew a deep breath that strained against her corset. "Thank God," she breathed: an earnest prayer as much as an exhortation of relief.

Cullen's lip quirked upward just shy of the right corner. "Thank God?" he echoed. "Who d'you think makes the hail, anyway?" Then he glanced sidelong at Bethel and sighed guiltily. "I'll allow that it could have been worse," he said repentantly. "We could have lost everything."

He was occupied in taking another swallow of his toddy, and so did not see Bethel's expression. Far from being one of pious indignation, it was a look of pained sorrow. It was almost as if she was thinking that perhaps it might have been kinder if they _had _lost everything. Mary repented that thought as quickly as she could, but not before reflecting that at least then the toil would be over and there would be no more drowning in freezing cold mud to try to save what was left.

"What about some supper?" Mary asked. She looked around the room. "We could pull a corner of the table nearer."

Bethel's face lit up in a surprised smile. "Tha's jus' what we'll do, Missus Mary!" she said. "I was thinkin' we gots to move him."

"I can walk to the table," Cullen groused, shifting in his seat. Mary stepped forward and planted a hand on his shoulder. She could feel the lingering chill of his skin even through the blanket.

"We know you can, but you don't need to. Drink up: your color is better already."

She seized one side of the table and Bethel the adjoining one, and they lifted two legs so that the heavy piece of furniture could pivot with greater ease. The other two legs squalled against the floor, and Cullen flinched reflexively. Mary's worry deepened. His head was still plaguing him: he wasn't well. He ought to have spent the day holding a pole and stringing leaves as he had promised he would. Instead he had wound up right back where he had fallen ill: stooping in the wet tobacco. Was rain water any better or worse than dew to work in? From a physician's perspective Mary did not know, but from her husband's haggard look she knew that to the tobacco worker there was no difference at all.

Bethel brought the warmed plate and utensils, then took the lid off the big boiling pot and ladled up a bowl full of chicken broth. "This ain't as flavorful as it goin' be tomorrow," she said regretfully; "but it'll warm you through an' soothe your ches'."

"There ain't a thing wrong with my chest," Cullen told her, and Mary thought – hoped – that she saw a spark of irritation in his cloudy eyes.

"An' that how I aim to keep it," said Bethel stoutly. She was always more than a match for his belligerent moods. She took the cloth off the plate and began cutting the slices of ham into manageable pieces.

"I can cut my own meat, too," grumbled Cullen, and this time he was clearly annoyed.

"How you goin' work a fork an' a knife an' hide your nekkidness with only two hands?" Bethel demanded frankly. Cullen's mouth dropped open in momentary surprise at her brazenness and then clamped shut. Had he not been so grey, Mary thought, his color would have risen.

He drained the last of his toddy and set to work on his meal, shifting awkwardly in the chair so that he could reach the dishes with greater ease. He was no longer shivering, and even his hands did not shake too badly as he used the fork. What tremor there was became more evident when he tried to lift a spoonful of broth and spilled most of it onto the quilt. With a disgusted sigh he picked up the bowl and drank from it instead.

Bethel emptied the copper kettle twice into the bath water, and by the time Cullen pushed his plate – about two-thirds empty – away it was steaming enticingly. Bethel laid out the soap and nailbrush and some clean rags on the floor, and moved the towels close to the stove to warm.

"I'll go and fetch you some underthings and your smoking jacket," Mary said, moving to the door. Cullen preferred privacy while he bathed, and on most occasions she did her best to respect it.

"Nightshirt," corrected Bethel. "Tonight be his night to res': he done sat watch three in a row now."

Cullen shook his head. "Meg needs it more'n me," he said. "I told her to stay in bed."

"Well, I's goin' out to untell her!" Bethel exclaimed, hands flying to her hips. "It your turn to sleep, an' you needs it, an' you's goin' take it. What would you say if one of them others wanted to give up their night off so you could sleep? Huh? You'd set 'em straight quicker'n a cockroach runnin' fo' cover! An' you'd scold 'em for fools, too."

"This is different," said Cullen. "Today's a special case."

"Yes it is!" said Bethel. "Today you done promised you was goin' hold the pole an' keep out the pickin'. If you got that fi'thy holdin' a pole the mud mus' be six foot deep. That mud out there six foot deep?"

"Will be by morning," said Cullen grimly. The rain was still falling in a firm, steady rhythm that drummed almost soothingly upon the roof. How happy such a rain would have made them all twenty-four hours ago!

"If you's forgot you's sickenin', I ain't!" Bethel scolded. She was well in her stride now and Mary let her own protests melt from her mind. There was no need for them, and Bethel's spirited lecture would be far more effective than her quiet reasoning could hope to be. "You is goin' up to that good warm bed with you' wife an' you' li'l boy, an' you is goin' sleep 'til breakfas' time. Or if you don' sleep," she added, seeing his lips part for a protest; "then you is goin' lie there dry an' comf'table while you's frettin' an' figurin'. But if that body of yours got the sense God gave Mist' Gabe's kitten you's goin' sleep whether you want to or not!"

She stamped her foot to punctuate this, and for a moment the Bohannons were both startled into speechlessness. Then Cullen's sagging shoulders twitched in grudging assent and he looked at Mary with something almost like a wry smile just skimming his lips. "I guess that's settled, then."

Bethel nodded, chin outthrust with an obstinacy that her longtime charge could not hope to equal. She strode to the back door and put her shawl over her head. "Likely I can catch Meg 'fore she goes to bed," she said. "I's goin' stay a while an' help with her washin' up, an' maybe set a piece if she don' min', an' you is goin' have a good hot bath. That water cool down, you warm her from the kettle. An' wash that hair, or you's goin' grow turnips in it."

So saying she swept out into the rainy night and closed the door forcefully behind her.

"She's right," said Mary quietly.

"I know she's right," Cullen growled. He chafed his hand against his beard and scowled. "I don't need tobacco sickness right now," he muttered. "Why's it got to strike at the worst possible time?"

She went to him and cradled the crown of her head in his hand, careless of the gritty feel of the half-dried mud matted deep within it. "I don't know," she murmured. "You do seem to get more than your share of misfortunes."

He chuckled despondently and shook his head. "I'm glad you weren't down there to see it. The top field's a ruin, Mary. We'll be able to salvage something, but it's…" Again his hand raked across his jaw, leaving grimy smudges in his beard. "It's like watchin' them plants burn."

"It's disheartening," said Mary.

"Disheartening," he agreed. He gathered a fistful of the quilt with his right hand and adjusted the hold that his left had lower down. "I got to get a start on that bath," he said. "If Bethel comes back and I ain't clean she's liable to try 'n scrub me herself."

Mary laughed for him, and was rewarded with a smile that was, for a tiny moment, almost unhaunted.

_*discidium*_

Boyd was as good as his word. Just before dawn three broad-shouldered field hands came up the drive, meeting Nate and Cullen as they came out of the stables. They introduced themselves respectfully as Jim, David and Levi, and each carried a bucket of water out to the tobacco. They were inexperienced in the crop, of course, and so Cullen set them to gathering up the tatters between the rows and uprooting those plants with broken stalks. He and his men continued cutting the leaves with torn stems, while Meg strung those among them worth saving. The day was cool and overcast, but the rain had stopped at some point during the night. The mud was horrendous: the field seemed quite without a bottom, and more than once someone lost a boot when trying to take a step and had to hop back sock-footed to haul it out. The Ainsley slaves, initially daunted by Cullen's presence and taken aback by the unfamiliar spectacle of a master stooping like a nigger, soon found themselves relaxed enough to sing. David led a series of boisterous call-and-response working songs, and after the first two first Elijah and then Nate joined in. Meg continued working quietly, doubtless weary from her broken night, and Cullen had neither the liberty nor the heart to participate. He kept his eyes on his work and his mind as far removed from his frantic figuring as he could.

It was heartbreaking to cut these leaves, which until yesterday had been the bright hope of the harvest. They were limp and ragged now, fouled with mud and torn by hail. There was not much chance of drying them quickly enough to prevent molding entirely, and that would hurt the price even more than the pits and tears and split veins. They would never be able to brush off all the mud, either, try though they might. It was almost easier to cast the worst ones away than it was to hand the others to Meg to be strung on the pole as he had hoped by now to be doing with the best part of the crop. Try as he might to think of something else Cullen kept running through imagined negotiations with his buyers in New Orleans, trying to point out color and breadth and weight and to distract from rips and patchiness and dirt. Even in fantasy it was demeaning, scraping almost but not quite dishonestly for an extra half-cent a pound.

At least the work was progressing quickly. Three extra bodies made a tremendous difference, and Boyd's men were well-behaved and hard-working. He really had sent the best of his crew, and Cullen was grateful. He did not know how he could possibly repay this kindness; a whole gross of cigars would not answer it, and there was little chance of Boyd ever asking a similar favor. He would have to think of that later: what was left of his pride would not bear it now.

The broken windows were another worry, for they would have to be replaced. Mary had suggested scraped rawhide, but although Cullen might have settled for that at least as a temporary measure he knew that Bethel would rather starve than see the house in which she took such pride sealed up like a trapper's hovel. For her sake glass had to be bought, but four panes were beyond the reach of his pocketbook and would likely stretch past what he could spare out of the much-reduced prospect for tobacco money. Nor was a glazier likely to extend credit: they did that only on building contracts, and even then only to the wealthiest clients. Glass was a luxury, and a costly one. He might raise a loan at the bank, but Madsen would want security and he did not know if he was willing to risk his stock or a piece of his land just for windows.

At least the damage to the garden was only moderate. It would have been much worse earlier in the year, but with the root vegetables almost grown and the peas and beans still supple and half-ripe almost everything would survive. Bethel would put in a late crop of collards to replace what they had lost, and the turnip greens were still edible. The yams and the potatoes would be fine: not as large, maybe, as they might have been, but plentiful and edible and unscathed.

They had been at it for nearly five hours, and the time was drawing on to dinner when the thunder of wet hooves on the grass caught Cullen's ear. Thinking it was Boyd, come by to see how his slaves were behaving, he looked almost eagerly southwestward. But he saw nothing and the hooves drew nearer, and it was with more dread than he could stand to acknowledge that he turned towards the nearer edge of the field. Every tormented muscle in his body stiffened and his back was suddenly straight as a ramrod despite the agony of the motion, for Napoleon was cantering towards him with Abel Sutcliffe proud and immaculate in the saddle.

Cullen tried his utmost to stride with dignity to the edge of the field, but the sucking earth hampered his every step and he slipped twice where it was nearer to slurry. Still he kept his head high. He was soaked to the skin from the wet plants, and smeared head to toe in the gluey Mississippi muck, and he stood amid the ragged ruins of a year's desperate hope, but he was damned if he was going to let himself appear downtrodden and dejected. His pride buoyed him, but it was his anger that really gave him the will to stand tall. What the hell did the bastard want, today of all days?

"I thought I made it clear you ain't welcome on my land," he said as the wealthy planter reined his steed to a halt.

"That's not a very convivial greeting, Bohannon," Sutcliffe said with an insincere smile. "And when I came all this way to see that you survived yesterday's tempest!"

"That's why you came, is it?" Cullen said sarcastically. He wasn't fool enough to believe that. If Sutcliffe had really been concerned for his welfare he would have come over yesterday, as good old Boyd had done, the minute he got the chance. But yesterday it had been raining: too cold and inclement for the well-dressed man to venture out just to revel in the misery of others.

"Just trying to be neighborly," he cooed, nodding sagely. "I hear tell you got hail. Happily we were spared that misfortune, though the cotton is wet and we'll have to lose a day's picking. Such a shame." He surveyed the battered field with a critical eye. "I'm sorry to see you've lost a good deal more than that. Can you scavenge anything at all?"

Cullen certainly did not owe this man an account of his prospects, and the obvious glee he was taking in the ruin before him was galling. "Why don't you just get off my land before things get ugly?" he asked in a deliberately conversational tone.

Sutcliffe's eyes raked disdainfully over his mud-choked clothing, and he sneered. "From the look of it things are already ugly," he said. Then his nose jerked upward like a hound catching a scent on a shifting wind. He did another sweep of the field, this time with a calculating look in his eye. "Why, Bohannon!" he exclaimed delightedly. "Did it rain hailstones or eagles? Your slaves have multiplied!"

"Remarkable, ain't it?" said Cullen impudently. "I bought me some hen's teeth and sowed my fallow land, and they just growed."

The patrician smile faded and the cruel eyes narrowed. "Did they." It was not a question. Sutcliffe crooked two gloved fingers and beckoned to the nearest Negro. "You. Boy. Come here."

"Stay there," Cullen said, gesturing firmly behind him without turning to see who the man had addressed. He frowned up at the other planter. "Don't you go disrupting my workers," he warned. "There's laws in this state against stopping work on another man's plantation."

Now Sutcliffe looked angry. "Are you threatening me with the sheriff, Bohannon?" he seethed softly.

"Do I need to?" asked Cullen.

"I only wanted to ask a simple question," hedged Sutcliffe. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle.

"Then ask it. From here." It was an insult to force a man to shout to a Negro, implying he lacked the authority to make the slave approach. In this case, however, Sutcliffe _did_ lack the authority, and Cullen intended to make him feel it.

He looked as if he wanted to reconsider, but he could scarcely back down now. "Boy!" he called. "Where did you come from?"

"Sou' Carolina, Massa," came the respectful and perfectly honest reply. Cullen almost laughed. Of the five men in the field, Sutcliffe had managed to choose Elijah.

"Mr. Bohannon bought you from South Carolina?" the planter said incredulously.

"Yassir, he did that," said Elijah soberly. "Wanted him a good tobacco hand, an' I's the best. Still is."

Sutcliffe cast a sidelong look at Cullen and frowned. "_When_ did he buy you?"

"Well, Massa, I don' 'xac'ly recall," said Elijah. "Mus' be… oh, nigh on forty years now. It were ol' Mist' Bohannon, of course."

Sutcliffe rose up in the stirrup, his riding crop twitching. Napoleon shifted his hooves uneasily. "Why you impudent—"

"Hey, hey!" Cullen cautioned, stepping in front of the stallion and shaking his head. "He ain't been disrespectful: he's speaking the truth. Ain't his fault you can't tell one darky from another. Lay a hand on my man and I _will_ put the sheriff on you."

"For striking a slave?" Sutcliffe said scornfully. "Brannan would never take me to task for that."

"For manhandling my property he'd have to," said Cullen. "You might keep him awful close, but I got friends too and he ain't running unopposed for reelection. Folks 'round here don't take kindly to a sheriff looks the other way when a trespasser starts damaging slaves."

For a moment Sutcliffe's face worked horribly beneath the thin mask of gentility. Then he mastered himself and grinned. "You borrowed them, didn't you?" he said. "The other men. Boyd Ainsley, I take it. He always did have a soft spot for the lame and the destitute. I recall the time he paid the fine for that vagrant. Even gave her rail fare back to Natchez. Tenderhearted young fool." He shook his head regretfully at generosity far beyond his comprehension. Then he blinked as though newly awakened and curled his lip at Cullen. "I came to see how you were managing after the storm and to see whether you'd changed your mind in light of certain…" He gestured broadly at the drooping tobacco. "…acts of God."

Cullen's eyes narrowed, suspicious but uncomprehending. "Changed my mind about what?"

"My offer," said Sutcliffe. "Twenty-five hundred dollars for five hundred acres of land. I considered suggesting a lower price, seeing as it's hail-damaged now… but I'm a good neighbor and I don't take advantage of another man's misfortune. I'm willing to honor to the original offer."

That the east pastures and the woods were not hail-damaged at all seemed irrelevant. Cullen's blood was boiling now and he had to clamp his jaw over the urge to tell this smug son of a bitch just where he could take his offer. Instead he shook his head. "I ain't selling," he said. "Not to you. I wouldn't sell five hundred acres to nobody, not at a hundred dollars an acre. Land ain't for sale."

"Are you sure?" asked Sutcliffe sweetly. "You might want to take stock of what's left to you and reconsider. It can get awful hungry in February if a man doesn't have money for flour."

Cullen's face burned like a brand beneath the streaks of mud. He didn't know how Sutcliffe had found out about the flour bought on credit, but obviously he had. Perhaps the grocer had gossiped; perhaps it had been someone else in the shop that day. It didn't really matter: it was just more indignity for the man to taunt him with. "My land is not for sale," he said coldly, speaking very slowly and clearly as though to an imbecile.

Sutcliffe opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. His eyes were drawn up over Cullen's head to the far side of the field. "Well, now, what have we here? Must be dinner time for the field hands. Run along, Bohannon: cold corn pone and beans taste mighty fine on an empty stomach."

Cullen snorted disdainfully, but only out of habit. He had hardly heard the insult, for he was watching Sutcliffe's face. He too seemed only to be going through the motions. His eyes were fixed on something distant, and his expression was changing. It softened strangely, in a way that made him look at once gentler and far uglier. His lips pursed into an unsettlingly ripe pucker, and between the lapels of his costly overcoat the white silk cravat rippled as his breath caught in his throat. The small hairs at the back of Cullen's neck rose inexplicably.

"So that's my foreman's little bastard, is it?" Sutcliffe breathed. "Skinny little thing, isn't she?"

And suddenly, awfully, Cullen understood. His hot indignant rage was swept away in a creeping chill. Before he could stop himself he turned, following the other man's gaze to the far end of the field. Ordinarily Cullen and the others brought their dinners down with them in the morning, but with the Ainsley men to feed as well it had been decided to serve up a more abundant meal than usual in earnest repayment of Boyd's one condition on the loan. Cullen had expected Bethel to bring it down herself, but for some reason she had not. Instead it was Lottie who stopped on the level place at the foot of the rise and set down the big basket with care. She had a gallon jug on her hip, and bent at the waist to place it carefully in the grass. She was wearing her blue frock, now her work dress because Mary had completed the new one for best wear, and as she bowed the too-short skirt rose high along her bare, spindly legs, painfully revealing her want of petticoat. And Abel Sutcliffe was staring at her.

"She looks a likely wench," he said. "Handy in the kitchen? A pity she isn't mine: I can always do with a good, obedient girl."

Suddenly Cullen wanted to seize the man by the front of his coat and fling him down into the mud. He could almost feel the pressure in his fingers and the webs of his hands as he closed them on the thin, wattled throat. The viciousness of the image should have startled and appalled him, but somehow it did not. Hanging was too good for Abel Sutcliffe.

Somehow, incredibly, early training prevailed over animal fury, and he pivoted on the heel of his heavy work-boot. "Well, she ain't," he said. "Pickaninnies belong to the mother's owner, not the father's. And she ain't for sale neither, so don't even ask. Now turn this animal around and get off my land. I've had my fill of you, and you're still trespassing. Get on out of here."

Sutcliffe looked at him with a sneer and a biting comment waiting, but he quailed before the quicksilver fire in the younger man's eyes. He drew himself up with what dignity he could muster and clicked his tongue to the horse. "Come on, Napoleon," he said crisply. Then he twitched one boot so the spur jangled and curled his lip unpleasantly. "You'd best not threaten me with the law, Bohannon," he said. "You'll find I don't take kindly to men who spurn my friendship."

"If this here is friendship I'd hate to see what you deal out to folks you only know in passing," said Cullen. He jerked his head eastward. "I ain't going to tell you again."

The spur dug into the horse's flank and the reins drew back. Napoleon wheeled and went careening for home, a sleek dark bullet against the grey sky and yellowing grasses. Cullen watched until he vanished, seething and sickened all at once.

A circumspect cough brought him back to the present, and he turned to find Elijah standing respectfully at the edge of the mud, his hat in his hand out of concern for his master's image before the neighbor's Negroes. "Mist' Cullen, Lottie done brought us somethin' from the house," he said, careful but pointedly. It wasn't his place to suggest that they break: not in front of others.

Cullen nodded. "So she has, Elijah: thank you." He cleared his throat, clogged with loathing, and cupped his hand to his mouth. "_Dinnertime!_" he bellowed, and his voice echoed back dimly from the land.


	32. The Christmas Barrel

**Chapter Thirty-Two: The Christmas Barrel**

Nate and Elijah brought the chairs from their cabins, and Meg dragged the table into the middle of the room before spreading her good gingham tablecloth over it. The men from West Willows were outside with the washbasin, trying to scrub the tobacco stains from their skin. Meg brought out the crockery and laid plates and bowls at each place while Elijah fetched the tin cups and Nate started unpacking the hamper that Bethel had prepared. There was a generous haunch of the last ham, which Bethel had roasted yesterday, and boiled potatoes with butter. There was a big dish of okra cooked with a small piece of salt pork for flavor and seasoned with fresh herbs from the garden. Instead of collards there were turnip greens, more tattered than usual but fresh and perfectly blanched, and there was a bowl of stewed tomatoes as well. Succotash and a pot of chicken soup thick with carrots and onion and parsnips and the last of the barley rounded out the meal. Most sumptuous of all were the biscuits: golden and light and still warm to the touch. The use of wheat for the slaves' bread was an act of necessity, for the cornmeal was gone, but these biscuits were still a treat.

Meg laid on the butter, which they had in abundance, and the pepper, which was dwindling. Elijah started filling the soup bowls and Nate quickly carved the ham. It was a splendid meal after a hard and miserable day's work, and Meg knew that Bethel had laid out more than the family could reasonably spare. Mister Ainsley had lent the use of his men free of charge, and his only stipulation was that they were to be fed by Mister Cullen. The whole household was anxious to meet this condition as richly as they possibly could.

The extra hands had proved almost beyond value. With seven working, they had cleared the last of the deadfall from the top field by the middle of the afternoon. More knives were fetched from the house, and Elijah showed the borrowed laborers how to cut the broken stems neatly. Then he stood over them holding a drying pole and dictating which leaves should be saved and which discarded. Meg had been surprised and very much relieved to discover that the men, cotton workers though they were, seemed to catch on quickly and did well under Elijah's direction. She had stayed with Nate and Mister Cullen, holding their pole while they cut, and when the light faded and they could no longer see they had halted only three rows short of the end of the field. Behind them stretched plants liberated of their broken leaves, the remaining foliage damaged but hopefully worth saving. They did not know yet whether the remaining leaves would grow any larger: they would have to wait for that. Meg desperately hoped they would; the poor ragged seconds at the top of the plants were still only ten or eleven inches long, and what would have been the prime tobacco before it had been battered and torn was not quite ripe enough to cure well. If they took it as it was it would have a greenish discoloration, and that would further harm the price.

Lottie came into the cabin, toiling under the weight of two laden buckets. Meg hurried to relieve her daughter, who smelled strongly of wood smoke from her afternoon in the curing barn, and filled the two pitchers with cold well water. One was a sturdy earthenware thing that had been a fixture of this house for as long as Meg could remember: even back when it had been home to Elijah's parents. The other was of porcelain painted with a green willow pattern. It was too chipped and discolored for use in the house, but Meg was very fond of it. The exotic pattern of trees and bridges and birds with sweeping tails, the boats and the strange Oriental houses and the running Chinamen had always captured her imagination. She set it proudly at the head of the table and nodded approvingly at the result.

"Please call the men in, Nate," she said, moving to stand in her usual place. They would be somewhat cramped, with seven people in a space that usually held no more than four, but as the neighbor's slaves came in and sat down, comparing tobacco stains and wondering laughingly if they would ever come off, she found she was glad of the throng. It reminded her of the old days when the quarters had teemed with life and noise. Sometimes the quiet yard and the empty cabins slowly slipping into dereliction filled Meg with a wistful melancholy. She wondered what had become of the others, her friends, the ones who had been taken by the bank to pay old Mister Bohannon's debts almost a decade before. She hoped they were contented, or at least free from suffering. There was no way to know.

"This here's one fine feas'," said David, smacking his lips eagerly as Meg piled his plate high with a sampling of each dish. She was glad that Bethel had taken over the cooking until the harvest was over: she was a passable cook herself, but she had nothing close to Bethel's skill or culinary imagination. "You folks eat like this ev'y day? Over yonder it been whispered you's pretty near starved out!"

"You didn' ought to listen to ev'ything you hear," said Nate, bristling a little. "We gets on all right."

Meg passed the plate of biscuits and Lottie grabbed one in wide-eyed delight. She broke the top off and inhaled deeply of the sweet scent, then set about smearing it liberally with butter. Levi took the plate next and whistled. "Flour biscuits!" he said with relish. "You' massa might work you all like pit mules, but at leas' you's fed well."

Nate cast a look down the table at Meg, and she saw the anxiety in his eyes. He knew this particular offering was a sign not of plenty but of utter destitution: the household had eaten the last of the bread bought and paid for, and all that was left was a barrel of flour that still belonged to the grocer in Meridian. Living on account was only one small step up from living on charity. For the slaves it was nothing but a source of fear, for there was not a Negro in the world too proud to eat what was offered. For Mister Cullen, Meg knew, the anxiety was made many times worse by the wretched humiliation of scraping for credit just to feed his people.

Meg feared for her master, worn down as he was by work and worry. Yesterday as they had sheltered together in the cowshed she had seen the awful, vacant look in his eyes as he had watched the hail hammer down upon the land. When he had gone out into the storm with nothing more than the hoarse exhortation that he had to know what had happened, she had been visited by the terrible thought that perhaps he had lost his mind. But when the rain slowed enough for her to venture out after him she had come upon the desolated field to find Mister Cullen standing shoulder to shoulder with Nate in the mud, hauling out a broken plant by the roots with the same unyielding determination with which he had been working all year. He had defied mud and mules, exhaustion and misery and sickness and shame, and now he was defying the hail as well. And just when it had seemed there was no hope of saving what was left of the crop from rotting in the muck, he had found a way to do that, too.

"He a strange one, you' massa," said Jim between mouthfuls of okra. "What he doin' out there in the mud, anyhow? Why don' he jus' ask Mist' Boyd for 'nother nigger? We coulda brung Tommy or 'Zekiel."

"Or both," agreed David. "Get them plants stripped in no time with a few more men. Ain't but fifty acres out there."

"Tobacco don' work that way," said Elijah calmly. Meg's pride was pricked by the other darky's offhand dismissal of the crop they had all toiled so ceaselessly to raise, and Nate was glowering, but the old man just smiled indulgently as he explained. "You got to take the leaves three-four at a time jus' when they's ready. Them broke ones we been taken woulda been ready in a few more days, but the res' ain't quite. We ain't leavin' them on 'count we gots too few men: we leavin' them 'cause they ain't done growin'."

"Oh, yeah?" said David, looking genuinely interested. "You think they's goin' keep growin' aft' the poundin' they took?"

"They gots to," said Nate. "We need them leaves full-sized even if they is ragged. We don' make twenty hogsheads we's goin' have trouble."

"How bad was the damage out your way?" Meg asked suddenly and rather too loudly. She didn't want these men taking stories of the Bohannon poverty back to West Willows to be spread to every slave in the county, and she knew Mister Cullen wouldn't want it either. She might be able to distract them by inviting them to talk about themselves instead. "Them clouds was blowin' straight for you."

"Got 'bout twenty acres flattened right to the groun'," said Levi as he demolished a potato with the back of his fork and stirred it in liberally with the hominy. Bethel had sent a little dish of ham gravy, and he poured some over the mixture. "'Nother thirty with the boles beat clean like they been picked by a man knew what he was doin'. Got cotton all wadded up in the mud like somebody tore up th' inside of a quilt an' stamped it into the dirt. Some the other plants ain't in such good shape, but Mist' Boyd say we's goin' pick them firs' jus' the minute they's dry."

"Shoulda see'd them li'l ones playin' in the storm," said David. "My boy wen' out while it was still pourin' an' got him a milk-pan full of hailstones. Big as cherries, some of 'em was. Shame he didn' fill a bucket: might have had us some ice cream!"

The good cheer with which these men talked of the storm that had left the prospects of her own plantation in ruins shocked Meg. She had been just as startled when they had fallen to singing. Didn't they understand what a disaster it was? But of course they did not, for it was not a disaster for them. They were not living one more failed crop from destitution.

"What he got wrong with him?" asked Jim thoughtfully. For a moment the others all looked confused: they had been talking about hail in the cotton, and the question made very little sense. "Your massa. He workin' like a nigger, but he getting' uppity with quality folks. Don' make sense.

Meg stiffened. "Mist' Sutcliffe ain' quality folks," she said vehemently. "He trash. He migh' ride a cos'ly horse an' wear fine clothes an' own him a hundred slaves, but he trash. Gentleman what puts trash in their place ain' gettin' uppity: he jus' doin' what right."

She had been too far away to hear what had passed between her master and Peter's, but from their bearing it had been obvious that the conversation was not congenial. Thinking back on it now, however, Meg remembered nothing but the awful moment when the wealthy man's eyes had strayed across the field to where her daughter had stood. Meg's blood had run cold with fear that was surely irrational, for the tobacco separated them and in any case Mister Cullen was standing right there and would never allow the man to touch her girl, but very real. And the way he had stiffened in the saddle at the sight of her… Meg felt sick just thinking about it and looked anxiously down towards her child where she sat snugly wedged between Nate and Elijah on the overcrowded bench. She was eating contentedly, her fingers stained green from gathering walnuts that morning while Bethel took her place in the kiln. She was happy and innocent and did not even look especially tired after her day's work. She was safe here.

When the meal was eaten the Ainsley men departed almost at once. No one had the energy to sit up talking long into the night, despite the treat of mixing with people from other plantations. The day had been a long one full of filthy and miserable work, and tomorrow would be more of the same. The three field hands struck out from the quarters due west, carrying a lantern that David had brought with him. This morning they had come politely by road, so as to approach from the drive, but Mister Cullen had told them they were welcome to cut across his meadows instead. It saved them almost three-quarters of a mile in their journey home. It was just like Mister Cullen to think of something like that: most white men wouldn't.

Elijah swept the floor and Nate wiped off the chairs and benches, which were smeared with mud from the slaves' dirty clothes. The stock had already been seen to, and very quickly with the extra hands to help, so the two men were now free to go to their beds. It was Nate's turn to take the second watch, so he had to be up in a couple of hours to go and relieve Mister Cullen. The middle watch of the night was the worst, as far as Meg could see. She didn't mind working a longer day if she had to: out in the tobacco from can-see to can't-see and then sitting up for three hours in the barn, or else sitting up before she went to the fields. But getting out of a warm bed to go out into the coldest and darkest part of the night, and then stumbling back to snatch another short rest before waking again in the predawn gloom was a misery. She hated it, and last night when Mister Cullen had offered to take her place she had been so tired and addled and discouraged after the miserable afternoon in the rain and the ruined crop that she had unthinkingly accepted.

Bethel had set her straight, and Meg was glad. She hadn't realized that Mister Cullen was coming down with the tobacco sickness again, but she should have. He'd been pale and quiet for days, and today, watching for it, she had seen how his hands shook and his knees trembled and wondered how she could have missed it. She had noticed how slowly he straightened and how carefully he slogged through the mud from plant to plant, fighting dizziness. And she had seen the dreadful drawn look on his face as the afternoon wore on: the look of a man in terrible pain. They were all hurting this time of year, and the chill of the day had made it worse, but this was something more. Meg was almost certain he was suffering from a misery in the head; she was prone to them herself after a long stretch in the wet tobacco, and she knew the torment they could be.

She poured hot water over the cold and stirred the contents of the dishpan while Lottie cleared the table. Meg washed and her daughter dried, setting the dishes carefully in the old cabinet. They worked quietly for a while, until finally Lottie spoke.

"Ma?" she said. "Who be that man on the big horse?"

"Hmm?" said Meg. She had been half-dozing while she worked, and the question had caught her unawares.

"When I brung down dinner. There was a man on a horse talkin' to Mist' Cullen," said Lottie. "Who be he?"

Meg's chest tightened and she swallowed painfully. "That Mist' Sutcliffe what owns your pa," she said. "Don' you remember him?"

Lottie shook her head. It had been over a year since she had last been to Hartwood to visit her father, and Sutcliffe generally gave the slave quarters a wide berth. You'd certainly never catch him on his knees on a cabin floor fixing an old man's table leg the way Mister Cullen had done for Elijah last month, that was certain. "Why was Mist' Cullen so angry with him?"

From across the field, so it seemed, the master's rage had been tangible. Meg could not bring herself to speak the whole truth, so she settled for a plausible fragment. "Mist' Sutcliffe been tryin' to buy up some of the massa's land," she said. "Massa don' wan' sell, 'cause if he sell a little he won' get a fair price an' if he sell a lot we ain' goin' be a plantation no more: Mist' Sutcliffe tryin' to push him out. You know Mist' Cullen don' take kin'ly to bein' pushed."

"But if he selled some land, maybe it wouldn' matter that the tobacco goin' fail," Lottie said in a small voice.

Meg looked sharply at her daughter and saw that Lottie's eyes were brimming with unshed tears. She put down the dishrag and wiped her hands on her apron, then reached to grip each of Lottie's thin shoulders. "Now you listen to me, my girl," she said. "That tobacco ain't goin' fail. We's los' some, sure, an' some of it ain't goin' fetch top price, but that crop ain't goin' fail. We's all out there workin' hard as we can to see that it don'. Elijah, he say we got a good chance of gettin' a fair harves', an' them plants in the bottom field is jus' as healthy as they was las' week. We goin' get the tobacco in, an' Massa goin' get us the bes' price possible, but we gots to keep workin' an' we gots to keep believin', you hear me? That mean you, too: you gots to believe the crop goin' be all right, or you goin' get scatterbrained an' careless when you watchin' them fires. Then the crop really _will_ fail, 'cause it won' be able to cure right; or they'll be a fire 'cause your mind is wanderin'. You wan' that?"

"No'm," said Lottie, shaking her head somberly.

"Then don' you talk 'bout the tobacco failin'!" said Meg. "That the trick to a good crop: you gots to _believe_."

"Mist' Cullen don' believe," Lottie murmured. "He got sadness in his eyes. He think the crop goin' fail."

"That's jus' foolishness," said Meg stoutly. "Mist' Cullen believe this crop worth savin': ain't he out there breakin' his back an' workin' when he poorly jus' to save it? His eyes is sad on 'count he tired an' he ain't well an' he don' get 'nough meat, but he believe in that crop jus' like we gots to. Even if mebbe he don' know it, he believe."

She sighed and cupped her daughter's cheek with one stained, work-roughened hand. She smiled wearily. "You hop 'long into bed an' get some sleep," she said. "I's goin' finish this here an' have a wash. That mud get into ev'ythin'."

Lottie scurried across the room and pulled off her dress. She smoothed the front of her shift and climbed into the bunk they shared. She flopped down on the pillow and pulled the covers over her head, and then abruptly sat upright again.

"Ma?" she asked. "Is the bottom field really jus' as healthy as las' week?"

"Yes!" Meg said, grateful that she could be entirely truthful at least about this. "Yes it is. Elijah say so, an' he been workin' tobacco pretty near sixty years. An' Mist' Cullen say so, too. We goin' get top price from that field, sure we is."

Lottie nodded and lay back down. Within minutes the coverlet was rising and falling slowly with the rhythm of her slumber. As Meg filled the old wooden tub with warm water and stripped off her wet and grubby clothes, she watched her child in quiet thankfulness.

_*discidium*_

Gabe was lying on his tummy under the sideboard in the dining room, playing quietly with Stewpot. The kitten was getting bigger and bigger, and as he grew he also got faster. The game of wrestling over a bit of knotted twine was now a tremendously exciting affair, and in his present position Gabe also ran the very thrilling risk of getting his nose scratched by Stewpot's batting claws. This had happened once, a few weeks ago, and though it had stung Gabe had felt very brave, like an explorer wounded in a battle with a mighty tiger. Bethel, of course, had been horrified, and had declared that cats did not belong in the house and weren't a fit companion for any child and that Stewpot ought to be out in the barn with his brothers and sisters where he couldn't hurt anybody. Gabe had been genuinely worried that he might lose his pet, but Mama had stepped in on Stewpot's behalf. She had pointed out that it was a tiny scratch, more pink than red, and that Gabe was not in the least bit distressed. And she had reminded Bethel that Pappy had agreed the kitten was an appropriate pet, and that Bethel had consented. And Bethel had had to allow that this was true, and Stewpot had remained in the house.

Gabe was glad, because with Lottie in the tobacco barn all day there were very few people for him to play with. Bethel never had time to play, not even at other times: she was more the sort to talk with him and listen to him and give him ideas about how to entertain himself while she worked. Mama loved to play with him, but with company in the house she could only play very quiet games that involved him sitting on her lap while she divided her attention between him and the guests. Anyway Gabe didn't like that sort of playing, because it put him right in front of the strangers and he still did not much trust them. Uncle Jeremiah said loud and cheerful things to him that did not make much sense, and Auntie Frances talked like he was a baby who couldn't understand her. And silly old Missy was useless. So mostly Gabe tried to stay out of the way and played with Stewpot.

It was Saturday afternoon, and that meant that everyone was supposed to be resting. That was the rule, anyway, but a long, long time ago in the spring Pappy had given up on taking the half-day off and usually spent it hard at work mending something or other. Gabe had been looking forward to this particular Saturday ever since the storm, because he had expected Pappy to spend it in the house fixing the broken windows. Instead, so he had heard Bethel say angrily to Mama just before dinner, Pappy and Nate and Elijah were working on in the tobacco, and Meg was relieving Lottie from her watch in the barn. Lottie was in the garden instead, digging onions, and there was still nobody to play with Gabe.

He didn't think Pappy ought to be working, he thought crossly as Stewpot made another successful lunge at the string and tugged energetically with clasped paws. Pappy had been sick in the night. Gabe had awakened to the noise of retching and the flare of a match as Mama hurriedly got out of bed. Pappy had been in the corner of the room, bent low over the washbasin as the sharp smell of vomit filled the air. Gabe had watched, peeking over the edge of the coverlet, as Mama put her arms 'round him and held his hair back from his face and murmured sweet, comforting things. In the end Pappy had rinsed his mouth and Mama had helped him back to bed before carrying the basin away. Gabe had closed his eyes tightly and tried to look like he was asleep while Pappy lay flat on his back beside him, trembling and taking shallow breaths and clutching a fistful of the bedsheet.

Gabe had wanted to cuddle close to him, because he liked to be held when he was sick, but he hadn't dared. To see his pappy, his strong and brave and wonderful pappy, so weak and helpless, had been scarier than almost anything Gabe could imagine. Even after the shaking grew less and Mama came back to bed and they both fell asleep again Gabe had lain awake between them, frightened and wide-eyed in the darkness, now and then letting his small hand creep up to touch Pappy's arm while he slept. He had only just started to drowse when his father stirred, and instantly Gabe was alert again. This time, too, his parents had not seemed to notice, for Pappy was dressing doggedly in the dark while Mama protested in an anxious whisper. But in the end Pappy had gone out to the tobacco barn and Mama had come back to bed, and when she realized Gabe was awake and hugged him to her he had felt wetness on her cheeks.

Now Mama was sitting at the dining room table, peeling tomatoes while she talked pleasantly with Auntie Frances. The kitchen and the dining room were overrun with tomatoes, for Bethel had spent the last two days bringing in the entire crop. Many were ripe, and most nearly-ripe, but even the tiniest green ones had been brought off the vine because the hail had bruised them and they would spoil if left out. There had been green tomatoes at every meal since Thursday dinner, fried in the last little bit of cornmeal Bethel had kept back for that purpose. It was a wonderful treat and Gabe munched happily on the crisp, savory slices. Even Missy, who protested that she didn't like Mississippi food, ate them eagerly. There were stewed tomatoes and fresh tomatoes, too, and now Bethel was making tomato preserves to save the rest of the crop. They would have sweet preserves and savory preserves and spiced preserves laid by in the cellar, so that all winter they could enjoy the taste of garden tomatoes with their biscuits and their hominy and yams. Bethel said she might even make some green tomato pickles if they started to soften before they could blush or be eaten.

Two small, shiny buttoned shoes appeared at the edge of the sideboard and Gabe sighed expansively. Cousin Missy. In a moment she was down on her knees, voluminous frilly skirts spread like petals around her. She put her hands on the floor and leaned down, head tilted far to one side as she looked under the heavy piece of furniture at him.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Gabe flicked the string for Stew Pot and said nothing. It was obvious what he was doing: he was playing with his cat.

"That's a pretty little kitten," said Missy with practiced politeness. "What's her name?"

"Ain't a her, it a he!" said Gabe indignantly. He took hold of Stewpot and flipped him over, lifting his tail and pointing between his haunches at the tiny little bulge that Lottie had shown him when he had chosen the kitten. It was larger now than it had been then, but still tricky to spot amid the fur. "Dem's his bits. Dat mean he a boy cat."

Missy blushed crimson and closed her eyes. "You shouldn't talk about such things," she said primly.

Gabe snorted in what he thought was a good impression of his pappy. Yankee girls were silly creatures. Then he felt immediately ashamed of such a generalization, for of course Mama had once been a Yankee girl and she wasn't silly at all. Mama was clever and she was sensible and everything else that Missy wasn't.

"Well, you shouldn' call my kitten a girl!" he declared. "He ain't."

"Don't say 'ain't'," Missy instructed. "It's isn't."

"I'm goin' say what I want!" argued Gabe. "You's jus' a silly girl."

"Girls aren't silly!" protested Missy hotly. "That isn't fair!"

"_Lottie_ ain't silly," said Gabe. "You is. Now go 'way: me an' Stewpot is busy."

Missy giggled. "Why do you call him Stewpot?" she asked, her indignation giving way to amusement.

Gabe frowned, puzzled. "B'cause dat his name," he said.

"But why did you _name _him Stewpot?" Missy pressed.

He didn't have an answer for this. Stewpot was named Stewpot because he was Stewpot. Nobody else had ever asked Gabe to justify this, and it seemed both foolish and oddly necessary to do so now. "He look like a Stewpot," he said uncertainly.

"Because of his color?" asked Missy. She lay down on her stomach, her skirts billowing over her bottom, and reached under the sideboard to rub a coppery patch behind the kitten's ear. "He _is_ kind of a stewpot color, except for the white patches."

Gabe was warming to this notion. "Yes. It his color," he said. "He like to chase my ball. An' to catch the string. Does you wan' try?" He held out the twine generously.

Missy took it between finger and thumb and dangled it in front of the kitten's nose. Stewpot crouched down into a hunting pose and sprang, batting happily at the knot. Missy startled and the string jumped, which only made Stewpot caper more eagerly. He lost his balance on the polished wood floor and fell onto his side. Gabe turned him over on his back and scratched his belly with two fingers. The kitten, who had been arcing inward in an attempt to right himself, suddenly stretched flat upon the ground and purred luxuriantly. Missy laughed and reached in to join in the petting.

"How soft he is!" she breathed. "I wish I could have a kitten." Then her hand withdrew suddenly as she sneezed. Stewpot craned his neck to look up at her, and Missy reached into her pocket for a lace-trimmed handkerchief. She wiped her nose delicately. "It must be dusty under here."

"It ain't," said Gabe, a little indignant. Mama and Bethel had cleaned every inch of the house just last week: there was no dust anywhere to be found. But Missy was smiling as she resumed stroking Stewpot's tummy and Gabe relented. "Maybe it a li'l bit dusty," he said generously.

Stewpot got up on his side and wriggled his head under Missy's hand. She started scratching behind his ears. "Where's the little black girl?" she asked. "Mama says you have a little black girl."

"I don'," said Gabe, bewildered. He pointed at Stewpot. "I gots a kitten."

"Mama said…" Missy murmured. She pulled back so that most of her face disappeared above the bottom of the sideboard. "Auntie Mary, don't you have a little black girl?"

Gabe heard Auntie Frances make a croaking sound, but Mama said; "That's Lottie, Missy. Perhaps you will meet her later. She's helping in the garden now."

Gabe frowned. Lottie wasn't little: Lottie was big. She was almost grown up. Missy didn't know what she was talking about. She sneezed again and then brought her head back down to his level. Stewpot mewed eagerly, and the two children fell back to petting him. At least they could agree on that, thought Gabe. Maybe Missy wasn't so bad after all, even if she was a little stupid.

_*discidium*_

After chores on Sunday morning Cullen retreated upstairs and got back into bed. He was unsteady on his feet and wracked with almost unbearable dizziness, and it was such sweet relief to lie down again so that the earth would stop spinning beneath him. He had struggled through yesterday in a fog of utter wretchedness, now and then staggering to the end of the row to vomit up bile and water – all that he could manage to force down – into the grass. But he had managed to keep from swooning uselessly away, and he had outlasted the sun. They had finished clearing the muddied leaves from the middle field on Friday, and were now finally picking from the plants that had escaped storm damage. Had he not been so overcome with the horrible all-consuming misery of tobacco sickness he might have savored the small victory of cutting leaves in the full glory of readiness, whole and undamaged and perfectly saleable.

They never would have managed even that little triumph without Boyd's kindness. They would still be out there trying to put right the damage from the storm while the leaves in the bottom field grew overripe and lost their value. There would not even have been a question of taking their much-needed day of rest, either: if not for Boyd and his three obedient field hands, Cullen would be out there now, fighting mud and illness and despair instead of huddling on the straw tick in his bedroom and subsisting quietly on the edge of consciousness.

He dozed through the day. Mary brought him a biscuit and some warm milk a little after dinnertime, and sat with him while he tried to eat. Then Bethel came and dosed him with anodyne powder for his throbbing head, and after that he slept for three hours before the need to relieve his bladder woke him. He managed to get to the chamber pot and back without losing either his balance or the contents of his stomach, and was forced to account that a victory. He crawled back beneath the blankets, shivering more violently than the cool but clement October weather warranted. His stretches of perspiring discomfort were punctuated by periods of unbearable chills when his teeth would clatter and his aching muscles jump and twitch in a fruitless effort to warm him.

He should have been out in the tobacco barn. Lottie was excused from her perpetual vigil on Sunday, and each of the three field hands and Cullen were meant to take shifts during the day. But it was obvious even to Cullen himself that he was in no fit state to keep watch over the fires, and Bethel had stepped in to take his place. She had done so on Saturday night as well, awaking long before dawn to sit the last shift and serving up breakfast late because of it. Tonight was once again his night to rest, and he was pathetically grateful. Perhaps after a day in bed and a good, long sleep he would be able to get back to work on Monday. He wouldn't be able to pick, but he could hold a pole – or hoped he could. Lying abed on a Sunday was one thing, but if he had to be immured here while the others were working, with the crop so tenuous and time so pressing, he thought he would just about perish with frustration and shame.

It was late afternoon when Mary came up again, slipping quietly into the dimmed room as if she expected to find him sleeping. Cullen, curled on his side with his legs drawn up to relieve the worst of the aching in his back, tried to smile for her. He feared he did not manage more than a thin rictus, but her expression brightened nonetheless.

"How do you feel?" she asked softly, coming to sit on her side of the bed so that she could reach to brush damp hair from his cheek.

"I'm good," he said, lying baldly. "Much better. Be back on my feet in no time."

"Are you feeling well enough to come downstairs for a little while?" queried Mary. "Jeremiah suggested we might open the Christmas barrel."

"Don't we want to save it for Christmas?" he asked groggily.

"We could," said Mary thoughtfully; "but Jeremiah seems to think it would be better right away. And that way he could report back to Mother and Father what everyone thought of their gifts. If you aren't feeling well enough we can leave it until next Sunday."

Cullen wanted to tell her to go ahead and open it without him, if Jeremiah was so all-fired anxious to do so, but he couldn't. He had just told her he was feeling much better, and now he had to prove it. So it was that he found himself dressed in his best day shirt and trousers and his silk waistcoat, shod in the worn old slippers, propped up in his armchair in the parlor while the barrel was rolled onto the hearthrug. Bethel had brought the prybar and mallet from the toolshed, and she gave them to Jeremiah before retreating to a post by the door. There she took up the innocuous posture that was a remnant of her early training: the pose that fine house servants assumed to rendered themselves all but invisible until needed.

The children were very excited, and that alone was almost complete recompense for Cullen's efforts to dress and the lingering unease he felt at the thought of a barrel full of largesse from his wealthy in-laws. As Jeremiah tapped the prybar to drive it in under the barrel head, Gabe bounced on the balls of his feet, clapping eagerly, while Missy watched with clasped hands and shining eyes. On the sofa Mary sat looking cool and serene in her beautiful lavender frock, and despite the pounding in his head Cullen felt almost at peace in his skin.

The top of the barrel came off, and with it a shower of straw. Jeremiah tried to scoop up as many of the stray pieces as he could, and then removed fistfuls from the barrel. He dropped them carelessly on the floor and then stepped aside and beckoned to his sister. "Come on, now," he said eagerly. "What's the sense in me unpacking it? Come on: see what's inside."

He looked almost like a boy – a florid-faced, stout, mustached boy – and Cullen's habitual dislike of his brother-in-law eased a little. Mary got to her feet, laughing effervescently, and dug into the straw. Her expression altered as her hands struck something, and she drew out a dark bottle of wine. She studied the label. "Oh, Jeremiah, it's too much!" she breathed.

"That's from Father," he said. "There's two more in there, providing they've survived the journey, and three of the Yquem as well. Only the best for his darling baby, Mary Beth: you know that."

"Cullen, look!" said Mary, handing him the bottle. He smiled for her and turned it in his hands. Château Margaux, Leonidas Tate's personal favorite and one of the most expensive wines to be had. His inclination to rebel against such a costly gift was tempered by the knowledge that it was an eminently suitable present for a man to send his married daughter, and a luxury that Mary sorely missed.

"Very fine," he said quietly, and set the bottle with care on the small table next to him. Mary was bringing out the others while Jeremiah continued corralling the straw that surrounded them. All six bottles had indeed survived, and were soon sitting in a row on the mantelpiece, joined by the one Cullen had set down.

"And this must be for Cullen!" Mary exclaimed delightedly, pulling out another bottle. The enticing clarity of the amber liquid within was unmistakably: best Scotch whiskey. "Here, Gabe, take this to Pappy."

Cullen shook his head. "Put it on the sideboard, son. Nice and gentle." He watched as the child, puffed-out with self-importance at being entrusted with such a sacred charge, carefully deposited the heavy bottle beside the empty decanter. That too was only an appropriate, even customary, gift.

Mary scooped the last handful of straw out of the barrel, and pulled out a thick tartan shawl that had been packed underneath.

"That's just for makeweight," Jeremiah explained, but Mary was brushing the fragments of straw from it and smoothing the rich woolen fringe with care. She looked up at Cullen with a question in her eyes, and he nodded.

"It can only be for Bethel," Mary said happily. She moved towards the door to give it to her. "Your old one is worn thin, and this will be wonderfully warm."

The dark eyes shone and the wizened hand closed on the fabric. "Thankee, Missus Mary," Bethel breathed, rapt with delight in being included so publically in the giving of the family gifts. Cullen watched Frances out of the corner of his eye, looking to see what she'd think of Mary hastening to share her gifts the "African" who shouldn't be touching children. She was smiling placidly, her expression studiously unreadable.

Mary went back to the barrel and reached in again. She came out with a little blue coat with bright brass buttons that was almost exactly the right size for Gabe.

"It was Julian's the year he was four," Frances explained. "For autumn wear, of course. I didn't think there was much use in packing his winter things."

"No, this is perfect for a Mississippi winter," said Mary. She looked around her to find her son, who was leaning against the arm of the couch. "Would you like to try it on, Gabe?"

"No," he said. Then, catching a look from Bethel, amended; "No, t'ank you."

Mary laughed and set the garment over the back of the sofa. Next she took out several little Holland shirts with fine ruffles, two pairs of sturdy but fashionable boy's trousers, and a waistcoat.

"Dat jus' like Pappy's!" Gabe exclaimed eagerly when this last garment was lifted. He pounded from one foot to the other thrice in rapid succession. "May I put it on, Mama? May I?"

Mary made a fine ceremony of helping him into the vest and doing up the shiny jet buttons. Gabe was then made to step out onto the hearthrug and turn around to display his manly dignity to everyone in the room. He cut a comical little figure with his Sunday clothes and his bare feet and the small silk waistcoat. Frances made much of him and Jeremiah applauded, and even Missy said pertly; "You look very dapper, Cousin." Then Gabe turned to Cullen, fairly bursting with pride.

Cullen nodded somber approval. "You're a gentleman now, son," he said. "You'll be riding in the hunt and squiring your mama to balls in no time."

Gabe giggled and climbed into his father's lap, and despite the wave of aching dizziness that tore through Cullen's head at the unexpected jostling he found there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to hold his son. He settled Gabe on one knee and fell to quietly admiring the buttons and the cloth and the tiny watch-pocket while Mary resumed the unpacking of the barrel.

Next came lengths of cloth, taken off their wooden bolts to save space but carefully folded and rolled to travel neatly. There were dress lengths: one of polished cotton in a becoming shade of blue, and one of dark green delaine printed with a pattern of oak leaves and acorns. There was a piece of cotton sateen and another of wool gabardine, both in deep shades of grey. Then Mary brought out papers of buttons: brass buttons cast as acorns to match the delaine, ceramic ones painted to look like strawberries, and a card of black trouser buttons. It seemed the family was going to be clothed for the year by the generosity of the Tates. Cullen did not so much mind the dresses for Mary, who needed them so badly and had not had a pretty new frock in two years, or even the handed-down clothes for Gabe, but he eyed the sateen and the gabardine with unease. He didn't much want pants he couldn't buy for himself.

Mary's breathless exclamation made him look up. She had just brought a pair of shoes out of the barrel. They were of dark-brown leather, polished to a high gloss but still unmistakably scuffed by eager little feet. And they had bright copper toes. "I think they're just his size!" she cried delightedly. She ran the three steps to Cullen's chair and dropped down on her knees, loosening the shoestring of the left one as she went. "Gabe dearest, give me your foot and let me try it on," she said.

Gabe obeyed, pushing his foot energetically down into the boot. It too had doubtless belonged to Julian four or five years ago, and Cullen had to bite his tongue before he told his wife to take them right off again. It was foolish to feel that way, he knew. Passing down clothes from brother to brother or cousin to cousin was common practice, and it only made sense. Children outgrew clothing before they could possibly wear it out, and it was economical and practical and sound to hand garments down to littler ones. But Cullen had had neither brothers nor cousins, and he wasn't accustomed to the practice. And although he knew it was foolish he also thought he would have been less uncomfortable with this gift if he had possessed the means to buy shoes for his own son. It seemed different to accept them when he couldn't provide them that it would have been to accept them if he could but no longer had to. It wasn't logical, but it was very much how he felt.

The shoes were a half-size too large, and Mary was absolutely rapturous with joy. "They're so handsome, darling!" she exclaimed to her son. And to Frances and Jeremiah; "How ever did you know?"

"Just a lucky guess, Mary Beth," Jeremiah said. "One not-quite-four-year-old is much the same as another, at least in the feet."

After this disruption Mary went back to unpacking the barrel. She was getting quite far down in it now and had to bend at the waist to reach. She brought out a card of hairpins and a little carved box to put them in, as well as a bundle of half-a-dozen silk handkerchiefs embroidered with roses. There was a pound of tea in a prettily painted tin, and a net bag full of brightly-colored Christmas candy. Then out came a quart sack stitched closed at both ends. It rustled under Mary's grasp, and a scent of lilac filled the air. "Emily sent that especially," said Jeremiah. "She knows it's your favorite and she read somewhere that they don't grow down here."

"They don't," said Mary, holding the bag under her nose and drinking in the scent of the dried petals that she used in her sachet. "I do miss them in the spring, and my cache was getting low. I shall have to write and thank her: what a kind thought!"

Now that was a gift Cullen could feel at ease about: dried flowers, inexpensive for Mary's sister to purchase but almost unobtainable in Mississippi; a sweet little reminder of home for a transplanted Northerner, and a simple, feminine treasure. There was nothing to hurt his pride in that. He might have made himself into a more successful man who could furnish his wife and child with clothes and shoes, and put wine on the table, and buy hairpins as needed, but he would never be able to make a lilac tree grow in Mississippi.

Next Mary brought out a small box with brass hinges and a latch. "That's for Gabe from Grandmother," said Jeremiah.

Mary's smile was positively radiant. "Dearest, would you like to open it?" she asked.

Gabe nodded and Mary put the box in his hands. Cullen put his palm under it to support its weight while Gabe worked out how to open the latch. He lifted the lid and whooped in delight. Inside was a set of tin soldiers: two little armies in divided compartments, their uniforms red and blue. Each had a little cannon with an attendant cannoneer, and small generals mounted on painted horses with tin plumes sculpted on their tin hats. There were tin lieutenants and two little tin captains, and each side had a dozen tin privates with rifles on their shoulders. Gabe was almost mute with excitement as he tried to stuff three of the blue soldiers into his vest pocket and filled his hands with the others. Cullen, yet again faced with a perfectly acceptable gift, looked up from enjoying the detail of the toys to see that Mary and Jeremiah were exchanging a small, uneasy look.

"That's just about everything, I think," said Mary, and she leaned to draw out a spread piece of newsprint. Then her face lighted up again. "Not quite!"

"I'll bring those out: they're a little heavy," said Jeremiah. Mary stepped back and he lifted out two bundles of magazines bound in thick twine: back issues that the Tates had read and saved. There was a year's worth of _Godey's Lady's Book _for Mary, and eighteen editions of _Harper's Monthly_. This was followed by a small stack of recent New York papers. "Don't know whether you're interested or not," Tate said to Cullen. "But I bought these up before we left. I always like reading about other folks' politics."

"Thank you," Cullen said, almost earnestly. It was a good thought, and the sort of thing one man did for another, but he didn't have time for reading. Mary was kneeling again, already unknotting the bundle of _Godey's Lady's Book. _She gave a tiny, happy cry when she lifted the first issue.

Beneath it was a picture book, printed in four colors. Mary called Gabe down to look at it, and he slipped off of Cullen's knee, fists still burgeoning with captured troops. Cullen set the box of soldiers on the table and shifted to try to find a more comfortable position for his sore body. Mary took Gabe onto her lap and began to turn the pages for him.

"I picked it out," said Missy. She hurried to sit on the edge of Mary's skirt, leaning in to look. "I picked it out for Gabe, Auntie Mary. I like the animals. That's a lion," she informed her cousin, pointing. "See his mane?"

Gabe growled ferociously, bouncing happily against his mother. Missy opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by a shallow little cough. Smiling sheepishly she murmured, "Pardon me." Then she went back to narrating the image for the younger child.

Jeremiah scooped up the fallen straw into the barrel and tilted it on its edge so that he could roll it out into the corridor. Bethel held the door for him. When he returned to sit beside Frances, Bethel started to gather up the lengths of fabric. The guests were all happy, and Mary was poring delightedly over the picture book while Gabe watched enraptured. It was a moment of genuine ease and happiness in a hard year, and Cullen should have been able to enjoy it with his family. But he was ill and he was weary, and tomorrow's toils were already dragging on him, and once again he wondered helplessly how his life had come to this. Looking at his beautiful wife and his contented child, he could feel only dread for the weeks and months to come. How would he provide for them? How could he give them what they deserved in life? And what was amiss within him that he could not savor one quiet evening at home?


	33. Uneasy Partings

**Chapter Thirty-Three: Uneasy Partings**

It was the middle of the morning on Monday, but Cullen was neither soaked to the skin nor smeared with mud. Nor was he stooping in tight-lipped misery among the tobacco. He was seated on the milking stool in the sunshine, with a hundredweight crate next to each boot. In front of him, strung between two forked branches driven into the ground, was the pole of lugs he was sorting. He cut the stem of each leaf where it was split to admit the rail, examined it quickly and placed it into the appropriate box. Several feet away Elijah was engaged in the same careful process. He sorted more quickly than Cullen did, for he could tell at a glance whether the lug was of good or indifferent quality. The younger man had to make a careful inspection, looking for discoloration or cracking, mold or grime or damage that might alter the worth of the leaf. It was a customary sharp practice among tobacco farmers just to put in the first few layers, top and bottom, in good leaf and fill the rest with poor or unsorted stuff, but Cullen insisted that they shun such dubious behavior. Questions of honor aside, he had a reputation for straight dealing with his buyers in New Orleans, and that was a valuable thing. It saved time in the inspections and stood him in good stead during the haggling. The extra work was worth it, particularly today.

At first he had been taken aback by the aged foreman's insistence that they had to pack the first batch today. He had suspected, naturally enough, that Elijah had been enlisted by Bethel in a conspiracy to keep him out of the fields for one more day. But upon examining the overcrowded barn he had been obliged to concede that they could wait no longer: if they did, there would be nowhere to put the poles that Meg and Nate were filling right now. So Cullen found himself sitting with the sun on his back, his eyes shaded by the dilapidated remains of his straw hat, his lightheadedness almost gone and his headache faded to a steady but tolerable thrum. The lugs, dried and cured and rested, were feathery between his fingers, and he was sorting more of them into the good crate than the poor one. He could almost forget that this was not the first wave of the bountiful and healthy crop for which he had been toiling all year.

"We's goin' need more boxes," said Elijah. "Ain't got but fifty."

Cullen looked up as he laid another long, fluted leaf amid the others. "How many you figure we'll need?" he asked.

Elijah shook his head. "I was hopin' for three hundred this year, but it don' look like we's goin' come close to that now. Mebbe a gross in all. Won' know 'til we sees how them bruised plants is growin'."

"Is there really a chance they'll ripen up?" asked Cullen. "Or is like Bethel's tomatoes, and you're just trying to give me false hope."

"I don' trade in no false hope, Massa," said Elijah. "You trus' me to tell you the truth as I knows it, an' that what I does. There still a chance they might. An' if they don't we can jus' chop 'em off at the stalk and hang 'em whole to dry; save the trouble of primin'."

Cullen frowned. The practice of taking the plant all at once instead of picking the leaves as they ripened was a trait of the smallest farms; places where some poor Cracker and his malarial offspring struggled to scrape out a living from a few acres of swamp. On plantations the more labor-intensive priming process was almost universal, because it produced a range of tobacco that could aspire to include the very best. It would be just another sign of failure if they had to resort to such backwoods measures.

"I'll pick up some boards next week when I drop the Tates at the station," he said, trying to focus on what he could control instead of the vast web of imponderables holding what was left of his crop to ransom. His credit with the lumber yard was good: he had set up an account last autumn and paid it off promptly upon his return from the disheartening trip to New Orleans. He didn't know if he'd be able to meet that obligation this year, but without the crates they had no means to ship the tobacco. It was an unavoidable risk. "We'll have to make them ourselves: I can't pay a carpenter."

"Sure, we can do that," said Elijah. "We saw 'em all down to size an' we can knock 'em together while we's watchin' the fires. Make the nights go faster if we have somethin' to do."

Looking up again, mildly surprised that he had not thought of this himself, Cullen nodded. "That's just what we'll do," he said. "Might just have the lumber yard do the sawing, too, though it'll mean another trip into Meridian. We're mighty short on time and hands."

"Shame Mist' Ainsley wouldn' let you have them boys longer 'n three days," said Elijah. "Could do a lot with three more men."

"No. We had 'em as long as we needed 'em to clear them rows and save what's left," said Cullen. "I couldn't impose any longer than that. Mr. Ainsley needs his people now: the cotton ought to be dry enough for picking again."

"Cotton hands," Elijah snorted in good-natured scorn. "Can't work when it's wet, don't know what it is to go down the same row six-seven times in one harvest. They's sof'."

"Sounds to me like you're jealous," Cullen ribbed. "You ever wish I'd just give up and plant cotton?"

Elijah shook his head. "Tobacco's what I know," he said. "You plant cotton, what use you got for this old nigger?"

"It might be easier," he murmured.

"It ain't," declared Elijah. "Ain't nothin' but a diff'rent kind of hard. Plantin' is plantin', Mist' Cullen, an' when you's down at dirt level it wearisome work. Ain't so much, mebbe, if you's jus' the one givin' orders an' watching other folks work, but down here where we's at it always goin' be hard."

"How do you stand it?" The question was out before Cullen could catch it. Sometimes he forgot that he was the master; sometimes it was as if he was still the idle heir of the household, shambling across his father's acres and probing for insight into the world around him.

Elijah shrugged his shoulders. "Wha's a body to do but stand it?" he asked. "Ain't no way out but starvin', an' I never did take well to that."

He laughed, and Cullen grinned thinly. It didn't seem funny to him; not in the least. Exhausted and ill though he had been last night he had lain awake for over an hour fretting, adding up columns of figures in his head and trying to figure out whether the expected return on the crop would cover the projected expense of stores and seed for the coming year. He hadn't managed to cobble together even one coherent estimate, for his aching head had proved unequal to the task. He had the first watch tonight: he would bring down his ledgers and the almanac and try to work through the calculations on paper while he watched.

He was coming near to the end of the pole now. The box of good lugs was three-quarters full, and the box of poorer stuff about a third. It wasn't a bad ratio, not at all. He might have found it within himself to be contented with it, had his mind not been so much occupied with worrying about the rest of the crop.

_*discidium*_

By Wednesday Cullen appeared to be on the mend, his appetite recovered and his complexion restored to its healthy weathered brown. Thus Mary felt comfortable enough to leave the plantation for a few hours to go calling on Verbena Ainsley.

Frances was remarkably excited by the prospect. It seemed she had harbored secret dreams of visiting a sumptuous plantation house of the kind so often described in Northern periodicals. Doubtless the modest Bohannon home had been a disappointment to her. She spent the entire morning dressing her hair and choosing her gown and making sure that Missy was turned out in her most becoming finery. Mary, far less in awe of the neighbors, simply put on her lavender frock and made certain her coiffure was neat and smooth, and then got Gabe into his good suit.

Julian's outgrown boots completed the boy's outfit perfectly. Mary had not realized how much the want of shoes for her child had weighed upon her mind until the worry was lifted. Intellectually she had known that there was no great urgency: days in Mississippi did not even turn cold until the end of November. But raised as she had been in a land where a substantial snowfall might be expected before election time, the knowledge that Gabe had been unshod into October had distressed her. She wondered privately whether that had not been Jeremiah's chief reason for wanting the barrel opened right away, too. If it had been, she was grateful that he had said nothing about it. Mary had been left with the distinct impression that some of the gifts – and this one in particular – did not sit well with Cullen. She thought perhaps it hurt his pride to accept such things, even if they did come from her family. He had grown up with so few relations that he did not really understand: had the Bohannons resided in New York or New England, where they would have had regular contact with the Tates, they would have been given such articles for their child as soon as Julian grew out of them – or at the very least as soon as Gabe grew into them.

Whatever his private feelings Cullen had said nothing against accepting the shoes, nor indeed any of the other gifts, but Mary had noticed that he hadn't yet opened his bottle of whiskey. Even ill as he had been she would have expected him to show an interest in sampling that. She wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but she was reluctant to do it. She knew that Cullen was unquiet in his mind, and she thought perhaps he wanted to keep his thoughts to himself; at least until Jeremiah and Frances were gone and he could enjoy the sanctuary of his home again.

But the guests were not departing until Monday morning, and Mary had to keep Frances entertained. So that afternoon Jeremiah hitched Pike and Bonnie to the buggy, and the two women crowded their hoopskirts into it. With Gabe between them, almost buried in flounced skirts and sweeping sleeves, and Missy on the driver's board beside her father, they set out for the Ainsley plantation.

They were unannounced, but Mary knew they would be graciously and enthusiastically welcomed. Cullen had Boyd's assurances of that, of course, but he did not really need them. It was something Mary had learned very quickly after coming to Mississippi: Southern hospitality was extravagant and unquestioning and always at the ready. The county ladies did not even have designated "at home" days like the women of Manhattan, when they were prepared to accept visitors. Every day was a visiting day in Lauderdale County. Ladies would pick up on a whim and drive out to a neighbor's for tea or even for supper; if the neighbor happened to be absent there were always courteous house servants to provide a little refreshment and insight into where their mistress might be found. Then the visitor would simply move on to the next plantation. The men were at even greater liberty to drop in on one another. Even the young bachelors, who in New York would never have been welcomed without adequate warning, might pop in to call on their belles with perfect spontaneity – though if the girl was at home unchaperoned they risked being sent on their way at once by an indignant mammy. The planter class had both the leisure and the means to entertain guests elegantly and at a moment's notice.

So it was that Mary soon found herself sitting in the sunny comfort of the back parlor of West Willows, dandling eight-month-old Lucy Ainsley on her lap while Verbena poured the tea. Charity and Missy were up in the nursery, presumably inspecting Charity's dolls. Charlie, Gabe, and Leon were in the vestibule, engaged in some sort of game that involved charging up and down the broad staircase at such a speed that little Daisy, who was not yet two and was exceedingly anxious to be included, could not possibly keep pace with them. The boys' eager whoops and uproarious laughter came through the open parlor door, punctuated now and then by the lisping protests of the tiny girl.

"They do raise such a ruckus at that age," Frances said as she accepted her teacup and stirred in a spoonful of sugar. "I don't know how you manage with five, my dear: it was all I could do to bring up my three!"

Verbena was always at her loveliest when discussing her children. "Little darlings," she said. "I hope I shall have a dozen. I'm very blessed: Boyd doesn't mind the noise at all. Though so far none of the children have shown any sign of inheriting their father's quiet nature."

Lucy burbled as if in agreement and reached for Mary's earbobs. Mary tossed her head to make them dance, but kept the baby a safe distance away. Lucy was a plump and rosy-cheeked child: the perfect portrait of a healthy infant. In her lace cap and elaborately ruffled gown she looked positively scrumptious. Mary let her close one wee fist around each of her thumbs and bounced one knee playfully. Her hoop bobbed and the baby crowed with delight.

Mary smiled, widening her eyes so that the baby would do the same. "_Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross to see what Lucy can buy!" _she chanted. "_A penny white loaf, a penny white cake, and a tuppenny apple pie!_"

As she reached the end of the verse she jiggled her leg more quickly, until Lucy was laughing almost uncontrollably. Mary lifted her into the air, stretching as far as propriety allowed, and then swooped the baby back down into her lap. Lucy dug both plump legs against Mary's skirts and bounced happily.

Mary flushed a little as she realized that the other two women were watching her. She smiled, half-apologetic.

"You're so good with her, Mary," Verbena said. Her eyes were shining happily with the pride of a loving mother.

"You ought to have another one of your own!" Frances declared. "Gabe needs a little brother or sister. Doesn't Mr. Bohannon want more?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course," Mary said reflexively, keeping the smile on her face. Suddenly she did not feel so carefree and ebullient. She had had so little time in these last two months to think about the little one she had lost, but suddenly the anguish of the dashed dreams returned to her in full force. She looked down at little Lucy, so pretty and perfect in her arms, and her ribs grew tight beneath her corset. If she had not miscarried she would be four months along now: starting to lace loosely and just about ready to give up any sort of public appearance until the close of her confinement. At four months, she had first felt Gabe quicken.

Realizing that she had allowed the conversation to lapse and that Verbena was now studying her curiously, she brightened her smile. "Has she shown any sign of cutting her first tooth yet, Verbena?" she asked pleasantly.

"Not yet," the lady replied, easily diverted to the topic she loved best. "Mind you, Leon didn't get his until he was almost a year old. I'm not in any hurry." She smiled conspiratorially. "Charity was a biter," she said, blushing a little.

"Oh, poor dear!" exclaimed Frances. Then she frowned bemusedly. "Or do you… well…" She glanced around the room, but of course the three matrons were alone. "_Do _you nurse her? Or do you have a darky wetnurse? I've heard such things are done."

Mary could have pinched Frances for her lack of tact. She had earnestly hoped to get through the visit without touching on the issue of slavery. She didn't know what Jeremiah and Boyd were talking about, but as they had retreated to the library she devoutly hoped it was Boyd's collection of curios. She had not thought to worry about Frances.

But Verbena, the perfect paragon of Southern womanhood, merely smiled graciously as if the question were neither obtuse nor impolite. "Oh, yes, it's done," she said sweetly. "What else are ladies who are unable to provide their own milk to do, poor lambs? A good Negro nurse is worth her weight in gold. But that really is a matter of necessity, Frances. What mother wouldn't tend to her own baby if she could? Besides," she added gently; "Mammy brought up Boyd and his sisters: she's beyond all that now."

"How peculiar," said Frances. "I cannot imagine keeping a nursemaid engaged over two generations. We dismissed ours as soon as Missy turned six!"

"My nanny was engaged to look after Samuel's children," Mary pointed out to her sister-in-law. For Verbena's benefit she added; "Samuel is my eldest brother."

"Well, yes, but that's only natural!" said Frances. "It's so difficult to find trustworthy servants, and of course the woman must have been glad to keep with the same fine family."

"That's just how it is with mammies," said Mary. "I don't think Bethel would even consider not looking after Cullen's children; she loves him so."

"Yes, but dear, she couldn't leave even if she wanted to," Frances said reprovingly. "She has no choice."

Mary's burst of shame was suddenly aborted by an unsettling realization. Had her own nanny had any more choice than a slave? An unwed, uneducated middle-aged woman who had escaped life in a Brooklyn slum by entering domestic service, who had lived subordinate in other people's homes from the age of fourteen… what freedom did she have to pick a different life? She might seek employment with some other family, of course, but always as a servant. She tried to remember whether her nanny had even known how to write her own name, but she could not. Certainly she had not had the same bonds of love and perfect trust with Mary's parents that Bethel had with Cullen.

"What happened to her after she was dismissed?" asked Verbena.

"Hmm?" said Frances vacantly.

"Your nursemaid. What happened to her after you turned her out of your home?" Verbena's expression was one of mild curiosity, but there was a glimmer in her eyes that almost seemed like dismay.

"To Rosie? Oh, I don't know," said Frances airily. "Found work with another family, I suppose. I did give her a reference. Not a really first-class one, of course, for she did tend to fall asleep in the afternoons while the children were napping, but it was certainly serviceable."

For a brief moment Verbena's carefully cultivated mask of serenity cracked, and Mary saw that she truly was horrified. Frances did sound so calloused and oblivious. There were days when Mary very nearly dozed off while Gabe was napping, and she had only the one child, and Lottie and Bethel to help her keep pace with him. Suddenly she found herself pitying the poor Maine nursemaid.

Verbena's expression was placid again, and she said calmly; "I'm sure I should always wonder how she was getting on. Bringing up the children does make one part of the family."

Before Frances could say anything else unbecoming, there was a deafening ululation of victory and the boys came careening into the parlor. Charlie was in the lead, brandishing a wooden sword. Gabe, close on his heels, had one as well. Leon, who had evidently been obliged to surrender his weapon to his guest, had a huge bedraggled ostrich plume instead. They wove between the sofas, crawled under Boyd's vacant armchair and then presented arms across the hearth.

"Well, now, what's this?" asked Verbena. "Is Camelot in danger again? Or are we under attack from the Indians?"

Charlie shook his head vehemently. "Redcoats!" he announced. "Gabe says they're hiding all 'round the woods!"

"We goin' find them, Mama: don' worry," Gabe reassured Mary solemnly.

"Wedcoats," agreed Leon.

"Where did Daisy go?" said Verbena.

Charlie wrinkled his nose disdainfully. "She's with the girls," he said in obvious exasperation. "Looking at doll petticoats, I guess."

"Ah." Verbena nodded solemnly. She shot a mischievous glance at Mary. "I think you three ought to patrol down to the kitchen to make sure the Redcoats haven't captured our supplies," she said. "And if they haven't perhaps Cookie can give you some rations to keep you fed on your march."

"Yes, ma'am!" Charlie said, saluting her crisply.

Gabe leaned forward out of rank to study his friend's posture, and looked at his own hand as he moved his fingers into position and raised them to his brow. "Yes, ma'am!" he echoed.

Leon was tickling his chin with the feather and did not seem to feel the need to contribute his thoughts.

"Ready, men?" asked Charlie. Then he threw back his head towards the ceiling. "_Chaaarge!_" he bellowed, and bolted from the room with his saber held high. The other two ran after him, taking up the call.

"The Mississippi Militia, defending the helpless ladies of Lauderdale County from the cruel invaders," Verbena said fondly. "How big your boy is growing, Mary. He looks more like his father every time I see him."

"Yes," Mary said proudly. "My handsome little gentleman."

The conversation meandered thereafter to horticulture, needlepoint and the weather, until the time came for Mary to remark that they needed to be getting home. Verbena asked if they would stay to supper, but Mary declined, saying that Bethel would be expecting them. The Ainsely butler fetched Jeremiah and one of the housemaids collected the children while the carriage boy hitched up Pike and Bonnie and brought the buggy around. Boyd and Verbena offered a most courteous farewell, and Mary and the Tates thanked them. Then they piled into the buggy and set off for home, Missy chattering happily about Charity Ainsley and Gabe cuddling drowsily against Mary. On the whole it had been a pleasant afternoon.

_*discidium*_

Monday morning dawned bright and cool upon a house that had been abuzz with activity for an hour already. The trunks were packed and loaded into the back of the wagon, and the Tates were dressed in their sedate travel clothing. The two families, Cullen included, sat down for one last pleasant breakfast together, and then it was time for Mary to say her goodbyes.

"Thank you for taking such good care of us, dear," Frances said, kissing her sister-in-law on the cheek. "I know it can't have been the best of times to be afflicted with company."

"We were proud to have you," said Mary. "I have so missed everyone: it was lovely to get a little taste of home."

"You must be sure to write as often as you can," declared the older lady. "And do think about coming to visit when your harvest is in."

Mary smiled but did not remark upon this. Frances turned and lowered herself almost to Gabe's level. "Goodbye, Gabriel dear," she said. "You'll be a little man before I see you again, I think."

"Yup," Gabe agreed, nodding his head. Over the last week he had seemed to grow accustomed to the unfamiliar adults in his home, but he had not really warmed to them. "I's a li'l man. G'bye, Auntie F'ances." He took a little step backward, tightening his grip on his kitten so that Stewpot had to wriggle to get enough ease to breathe.

"Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye?" asked Frances in a tone of playful indignation.

"Don' t'ink so," said Gabe, looking sidelong at his mother. Mary smiled reassuringly at him, and he relented a little. "I guess you's can hug me."

Frances laughed and did so, then stepped back. "Say goodbye to Auntie Mary, Missy."

Missy stepped forward, and her arms moved uncertainly. Mary understood, and bent to embrace her. "Goodbye, Auntie Mary," Missy said, sounding rather hoarse as though she wanted to cry. "I know I shall miss you."

"I'll miss you too, darling," Mary said. "Have a safe journey home. I'll be sure to send you letters."

"I will, too!" said Missy happily, her melancholy face brightening at this prospect. "I'll write every week!"

She turned next to Gabe, and before he could react bent and kissed him. "Goodbye," she said. She smiled shyly. "I'll miss you. And you don't speak funny after all."

"You don't neider," said Gabe generously. He put his hands around the kitten's ribs and held him out. "Say goodbye to Stewpot?"

"Goodbye, Stewpot," Missy said, scratching the kitten behind the ears. His hind legs batted pleasurably, but Missy had to withdraw her hand and reach hastily for her handkerchief as she sneezed three times in rapid succession. This was followed by a shallow cough. "I'll miss you, too," she said.

After a few more obligatory wishes for a safe and comfortable journey from Mary, Frances and her daughter stepped out into the orange morning light, and Jeremiah was left alone with his sister and nephew. Mary looked at her brother, watching her with soft, sad eyes, and she did not know what to say.

"Can't I persuade you to come after all?" he asked quietly. "We could delay until tomorrow to give you a chance to pack. I'd explain to your husband for you."

"No," said Mary. "No, I couldn't possibly. My place is here. My home is here." She closed the distance between them and reached to put her palm against her brother's cheek. "I know your heart is in the right place, but you have to try to see how impossible it is for me to leave."

He screwed his eyes closed. "I do," he said. "I truly do. I just…"

He looked at her and reached to draw her hand away from his face. He clutched it in both of his own, looking down at her fingers as if trying to memorize their every contour. "I just wish I could be sure I would see you again," he whispered, his voice catching painfully in his throat.

"Of course you will," Mary promised. "It may not be for another five years, but of course we'll see each other again!"

He studied her face and nodded. "I'm being foolish, I know," he said. "But if Mississippi does leave the Union…"

"Then it will be no different than if I were living in Paris or Montreal," declared Mary. "Postage would be more expensive, that's all. I still do expect you to write when you can."

"Of course I will," he promised. He reached up and, in an intimate gesture he had not made in fifteen years, stroked the wing of hair that swooped down from her part to her ear. "Take care of yourself, Mary Beth. I know you'll take care of Cullen Bohannon, but I want you to take care of yourself as well."

"Don't be silly," she murmured, but her throat was tight and she was afraid she might start weeping. Suddenly she wanted to throw herself into his arms and weep against his shoulder, the way she had the year she was five when she had fallen down the steps of the Manhattan townhouse and scraped her knees raw. Instead she squeezed his hand and smiled. "Have a safe journey. And do try to be patient with Frances in the stagecoach: I think she lives in terror of them now."

Jeremiah's laugh caught painfully in his throat and his eyes locked with hers. In an instant the whole history of their shared lives seemed to pass between them. Then a polite cough came from the doorway and the spell was broken.

"I hate to interrupt the fond farewells," said Cullen. He was leaning on the doorjamb and consulting his watch. "But we ain't got but ninety minutes before your train leaves, and it'll take the mules a full hour to get into Meridian. Sure you don't want to come, Mary? Give you a little longer to say goodbye."

In that instant she wanted nothing more than to delay the parting, but she knew that it was best to get it over with now. Besides, she was not dressed for a drive into town: she had put on the nicest of her work dresses without a hoop, in anticipation of helping Bethel to put the house to rights. "I'd best not," she said. She kissed her brother's cheek. "Goodbye, Jeremiah, and thank you. For everything. You're so very sweet."

Jeremiah mustered an unsteady smile, the corners of his mustache quivering. Then hastily he turned from her and dropped to one knee before his nephew. "Goodbye then, Gabe," he said. "You look after your mama, you hear me?"

"Yassir," said Gabe stoutly. "I always looks after Mama."

"Good," said Jeremiah. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and brought out a glittering gold coin. "Here's a dollar for you. Don't lose it, and don't spend it all at once."

Gabe's face broke into an eager grin. He had never before had his very own money. He held out his hand and closed it tightly around the coin. "I won't," he pledged. "G'bye, Uncle Jeremiah. You take care on dat train."

Jeremiah chuckled as he got to his feet, then glanced at Mary and lost his smile. Swiftly he moved in and brushed his lips against the crest of her cheekbone, his whiskers tickling her temple. "Goodbye," he breathed. Then he squared his shoulders and strode off past Cullen, and jogged down the veranda steps towards the waiting buggy.

Mary tore her eyes away and found Cullen watching her. "You all right?" he asked softly, his expression gentle.

She nodded. "You'd best get on," she said. "It would never do to miss the train."

"Yup," Cullen huffed. He smiled shallowly and pushed himself off the doorpost, then strode down to climb up beside Missy. He gathered the reins and clicked his tongue. "Off we go!" he said as the Morgans picked up into a trot.

With a rattle of wheels and a squeaking of springs the buggy was gone from view. Mary might have gone out onto the veranda to wave them off and to watch until they vanished up the drive, but she could not quite bring herself to do it. Instead she turned around and put on her very sunniest smile for Gabe. "You've been such a good boy for the company," she said. "Let's go and put that dollar in my jewel box where it will be safe."

"No!" said Gabe, his expression suddenly very fierce. He lowered his arm to drop the kitten and then clasped his empty hand over the one clutching the dollar. "Pappy keep _his _money in de desk. I wan' put mine in dere, too."

The obdurate set to his jaw and the belligerent look in his eyes were such a perfect echo of Cullen's that Mary found herself laughing. "All right, then: into the desk it goes."

She let him lead her into the parlor and lifted him up so that he could tuck his dollar into one of the drawers near the top of the secretary. By the time this little ceremony was concluded Bethel had come out from the kitchen and was waiting in the front entryway. Mary greeted her with a determined smile. "Let's get to work," she said, and the black woman nodded.

The most important order of business was changing the mattress on the Bohannons' bed. After a fortnight the straw was finally broken in to the point where it was almost comfortable, but Mary intended to get Cullen back into a feather bed as quickly as she could. She didn't know whether his sleep had been broken by the unfamiliar mattress, or whether it was just that his tossing and turning was more evident on straw, but it worried her. It was hard work for the two women to wrestle the heavy tick off the bed and to move the two lighter but equally ungainly feather mattresses up the hallway. Gabe watched the entire procedure with great interest from the safety of the stairwell. When the bed was made and the guests' sheets and pillowslips bundled up to be washed the next day, it was time to restore the nursery to its original owner. These efforts were superintended by Gabe, who knew every change that had been made and insisted they all be put right to his satisfaction. When Mary's third attempt to put his rag rug back "'xac'ly" where it belonged failed, Gabe hopped down out of the armchair and promptly did it himself, shooting his mother a look of intense exasperation.

Bethel chuckled. "There now, Missus Mary, was that so hard?" she asked.

_*discidium_*

With the trunks carefully loaded in the baggage car and the portmanteaux settled on the luggage rack in the passenger car, Cullen slipped past the conductor and hopped back down onto the platform. Missy and Frances, who had been waiting in the shaded comfort of the buggy, now came towards the train with Jeremiah. Cullen hurriedly removed his hat and smiled courteously.

"Goodbye to you, Miss Frances," he said. "I'm sorry I wasn't much company for you, but we been proud to have you to visit."

"Thank you, Mr. Boh—_Cullen_," she said, extending her hand. "I know we have taken you away from your work, and I'm sorry for it. Please understand."

"I do," he assured her. "It's been good for Mary to spend time with her people. You have a safe journey, now."

She thanked him, and he said his farewells to Missy, and the two of them stepped up onto the train, the conductor escorting them down to the seats beneath their cases. This left Cullen and Jeremiah standing on the platform amid the chaos of last-minute loading. Unsure what to say to his brother-in-law, with whom he had scarcely exchanged half a dozen sentences since their moonlight quarrel, Cullen rubbed his palm against the side of his trousers and smiled thinly.

"Guess this is goodbye," he said awkwardly.

"I suppose it is," said Tate. "Thank you for your hospitality. And I do appreciate you being gracious to my wife and daughter even if you and I don't see eye-to-eye."

"Like I told you the day you arrived, the comfort of our ladies comes first down here," Cullen told him. "I know how to mind my manners: I ain't a savage."

"I know that." Tate grimaced uncomfortably. "I just…"

"You just find it easy to dismiss me on account of the way I talk, and the fact that I'm Southern, and because I own slaves," said Cullen. "Them three things been between us since the day we met, Tate: don't try and deny it."

"Yes, they have," said Jeremiah. "And you don't like me because I make use of my education, and I'm successful in a world you couldn't cope with, and I'm not afraid to speak out for my beliefs even when it isn't convenient."

Cullen shook his head. "That ain't it at all," he said. "I got more education than you, though you like to forget it; I had me some success in that world too, only I didn't much care for it; and I respect any man who'll speak out for his beliefs, _especially _when it ain't convenient. What I don't like about you is the way you sit in judgment over everyone who don't see the world the way you see it, or want the things you want. You suffer from the Northern delusion that you're inherently superior to the rest of us, and somehow that gives you the right to stick your nose where it ain't wanted."

He broke the burning gaze with which he had been holding the other man's eyes, and drew his palm across his jaw. "It don't matter anyhow," he said. "You're going, and we ain't going to see each other again for years. I'm thankful you came to see Mary: I know how fond she is of you, and she been missing her people. And I wish you a safe journey. Don't spend the night at the rail hotel in Corinth: last I heard they got bedbugs."

Tate's nose wrinkled. "I appreciate the advice," he said. Then he reached out and seized Cullen's elbow. "You look after my sister, Bohannon," he growled. "I mean it. Whatever happens, you remember she's your first responsibility. Her and that sweet little boy."

Cullen flung him off, bristling with hot indignation. "I told you, Tate: you got no right telling me my business. And you don't need to remind me to look after my wife. Whatever I got to do I'll see she's fed and cared-for. Now why don't you get on that train and start looking after your own family?"

Jeremiah looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he simply shook his head instead. "Goodbye, Bohannon. I won't pretend I'm sorry you've been too busy to have much to do with us, but I thank you for the hospitality of your home nonetheless."

"And you're welcome to it nonetheless," said Cullen; "but I won't pretend I ain't glad to see you gone."

Tate grunted and inclined his head, then brushed past Cullen and climbed the iron steps to the door of the rail carriage. He turned and looked back. "Bohannon," he said. "If Mississippi tries to leave the Union you've got to know: Washington will not simply let her go."

"Washington don't know how to mind its own business any better than you do," Cullen said caustically. "You go back and tell all your abolitionist friends that the Southern states ain't just going to lie down and give up their freedom to make their own choices. We got a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, same as everybody else."

"Everybody else, Bohannon?" said Tate archly. And then he was gone, vanished behind glass reflecting the east half of Meridian in sharp, lively detail.

Cullen ran his tongue along his teeth as if to scrub away the taste of his brother-in-law, and turned back toward the buggy. Further up the platform Nate was sitting on the buckboard seat, holding the mules tight against their urge to bolt from the noise and the smoke. His eyes were fixed on his master. Cullen climbed onto the driver's seat and turned Pike and Bonnie away from the hitching post. He pulled up next to his man and leaned forward with his elbow on the buggy rail.

"You got something you want to say?" he asked.

Nate shook his head, and his eyes were free from the storm of resentment that had filled them for so long. He only looked weary, and maybe just a little sad. "We bes' get down to the lumber yard," he said quietly. "Need us some planks for them crates."

Cullen grunted his assent and flicked the lines. He did not look back at the train carrying away his troublesome guests, but as he dickered with the proprietor of the lumber yard he listened for the howl of the whistle that meant they were well on their way.


	34. Man and Wife

_Note: Mild content warning. Still within the rating, but you know… mild content warning. It's canonical, though: "Mary was a lot of fun"._

**Chapter Thirty-Four: Man and Wife**

It was almost as if Jeremiah and Frances had never been present at all. The little house was restored to order, and the only signs left of the guests were the gifts they had left: wine on the rack in the root cellar, Gabe's little boots, a new row of magazines on the shelf in the parlor, tin soldiers lined up for battle on the nursery floor. Mary decanted the whiskey so that it stood enticingly on the sideboard, and Bethel rinsed the empty bottle and put it away for some other, later use. They moved the trunk of winter clothes back into the front bedroom, but Mary decided that the sewing machine could stay where it was. In making Lottie's dress she had enjoyed being convenient to the dining room table and closer to the heart of the home, instead of tucked away in a little-used upstairs room.

With everything once more where it belonged, Bethel and Mary fell back into the work of laying in preserves. A gentle rain started up shortly after noon, and made it bearable to stand over the hot stove stewing the fruit and sealing the earthenware jars. Mary filled a peck basket with apples and sat at the table quartering them for boiling while Gabe sat beside her playing happily with his two little generals and now and then helping himself to a slice of the crisp, tart fruit. The tomatoes had all been successfully saved, and Bethel was now busy pickling beets. When the apples were soft the two women took turns pressing them through the tin sieve with a heavy pestle to make a fine puree. With this they mixed the sweeting and the spices, scraping the very bottom of the cinnamon drawer to do it. They were using sorghum and vinegar instead of sugar and lemon juice, but the resulting mixture tasted only a little different from what Mary had been expecting, and the texture was just right. Then it was poured over the bottom of the largest pot and put on the back of the stove to simmer and thicken into apple butter.

While Bethel divided her energies between stirring this concoction and spooning briny beets into little pots, Mary took out the picnic hamper and filled it. For two weeks, with Mary and Bethel occupied with the guests and Lottie tending the tobacco fires, the four in the fields had had to do without their afternoon sustenance, and Mary was determined to bring it out to them today. She cut eight thick slices of bread, slathering them liberally with butter and sandwiching them in pairs before wrapping them in a napkin. There were hard-boiled eggs left from breakfast, and she put these in the basket as well. She took a small piece of butcher's paper and folded it into a little funnel which she filled with salt and pepper and twisted closed. She covered the dish of stewed tomatoes – the last of the fresh ones – with a scrap of waxed linen to keep it from sloshing as she walked. There was about half pint left of the green-bean-and-potato bake that Bethel had made for the Tates' last supper in Lauderdale county, and Mary included this as well. The last of yesterday's apple tart was set carefully on top, and four tin plates slid down one side of the basket. Forks and a serving spoon were added, and five clean, ruddy apples, and then the basket was filled. Mary looked at it for a moment before tucking a cloth over top to keep out the rain. It was a varied meal and would surely be welcome to those working on empty stomachs, but there was not a scrap of meat.

"Where you goin' wid dat?" asked Gabe as Mary put on her bonnet and wrapped Bethel's shawl about her shoulders, hefting the basket into her arms.

"I'm taking some food down for Pappy and Nate and Elijah and Meg," said Mary. "They've got hours to work before suppertime, and they'll be hungry."

Gabe kicked the underside of the bench in his eagerness to launch himself off of it. "I's comin' too!" he announced. He hopped down onto the floor, reconsidered his strategic position, and clasped his hands behind his back in an adorably innocent posture. "_May_ I come too?" he amended.

Mary did not have the heart to deny him, but neither did she think that Bethel would approve. "It's raining, dearest," she hedged.

"Ain't rainin' that hard, Missus," said Bethel, not looking up from the slowly clarifying apple butter. "He won' take no harm from a little walk. Do him good mos' likely. Do his pappy good, too, to see him."

Mary did not doubt that this was true. She smiled at Bethel's quiet conspiracy. Cullen needed cheering, and badly, and the sight of his son was the one thing truly likely to do it. "Run and fetch your boots and your topcoat, darling," she said to her child, setting the basket down on the edge of the table.

Gabe tore off into the front hall, from which direction some disconcerting thumps and bangs soon issued. When he was gone Bethel turned from the stove. "Try an' get him to sit a while if you can, Missus Mary," she said. "Even jus' ten-fifteen minutes to take the weight off his feet. Don' let him jus' bolt that food down and get straight back at it."

"It won't be easy," said Mary. "He'll be chasing after a wasted morning."

"I know it, an' tha's why you's takin' Mist' Gabe," said Bethel. "That chile got the knack for persuasiveness."

The little diplomat himself came charging back into the room, brandishing a copper-toed boot in each hand. He had put on his little gabardine topcoat, but had managed to get it upside-down. Mary smilingly set it to rights and tied the shoestrings snugly. She picked up the basket again and opened the door, just as Bethel came from the stove with a stoppered pint bottle which she placed carefully in Gabe's hands.

"You take this down to your pappy," she instructed. "Don' you drop it, now. It goin' get warm."

"I won'," Gabe pledged valiantly. "Not me."

"Good boy," said Bethel. "Coffee," she added at Mary's querying look. "Already sweetened up. They can use the water dippers to drink it: no sense sendin' cups."

Mary smiled her thanks for this piece of ingenuity and slipped out onto the stoop, holding the door with her hip so that her small companion could follow. Together they crossed the dooryard and cut up onto the rise. As they neared the crest, Gabe turned and looked back.

"You's can see de house from here," he said; "but not down dere. But itstill Pappy's land, ain't it, Mama?"

"That's right, dearest," Mary agreed. "All of this is Pappy's land. It will be yours someday."

Gabe frowned. "Where Pappy goin' live then?" he asked.

Realizing she had unwittingly touched on the taboo subject of his father's mortality, Mary scrambled for a credible evasion. "Wouldn't you let Pappy live on your land?" she asked pleasantly.

Gabe snorted. "'Course I would!" he declared, then added generously; "An' you, too." They took another few steps together before Gabe paused, pensive. "An' when I's growed up den _I_ can work hard, an' Pappy won' have to."

Mary wanted to gather him into her arms and kiss him, her sweet and uncomprehendingly selfless little boy. But she was laden with the hamper and could only smile. "That's very good of you, dearest," she said. "But I hope by the time you're grown up our troubles will be over and no one will have to work as hard as your pappy does now."

Gabe considered this, then nodded and started down the hill, singing loudly and blithely off-key one of Bethel's songs: "_Nobody know de troubles I's seen; nobody know bu' Jesus. Nobody know de troubles I's seen. Glo-o-o-ry Halle—_Pappy!"

His pace quickened to a run, small legs flying so that he careened down the hill with such a fearsome pace that he looked about to topple over. But he reached the flat stretch of sod safely and stopped eagerly at the edge of the field, hugging the bottle to his chest with one arm so that he could wave with the other at his father. "Pappy, Bet'l send you coffee!"

Cullen, halfway down one of the now-ragged rows, turned his head and raised his eyes without straightening his stooped spine. He blinked into the gentle rain, frowning as he took in the sight of his child at the border of the mud and his wife coming down through the wet indiangrass. Then he mustered up a smile. "Did she, now?" he called, hurriedly cutting the leaf he had been holding and handing it up to Elijah. "And she sent you to bring it to me."

"Yeah," said Gabe, in precisely his father's lilting way. "I didn' spill none of it, neider."

"Good man. Go ahead and set it down by the buckets: we'll stop at the end of the row." So saying he bent his head again and burrowed deeper into the plant he was priming.

Gabe toddled off to obey, happily enough, but Mary reached the foot of the hillock and stopped. The sight before her tore at her heart. She did not often come down to the tobacco fields, but she had seen enough of them over the years to know how a crop ought to look mid-harvest. The broad fronds should have spread proudly across the rows, like ladies' ruffled parasols over the bare stretches of stalk. Instead these leaves drooped, tired and tattered and dejected. The rain, hardly more than a heavy mist in the air, gathered along the battered veins and dripped from the ragged tips to cut little freshets in the earth. But as hard as this vista was to bear, the bowed, muddied figures between the rows were worse. Shoulders rounded against the pain of stooping, weary arms working methodically, proud backs bent, Cullen and Nate scrounged for the salvage of the once-promising harvest. Elijah and Meg leaned heavily against the tobacco poles they held, the butts buried against the toe of boot and shoe to keep them from sinking into the mire. Elijah's head was bowed so that the grizzled curls at the nape of his neck showed beneath the palmetto-frond rain hat, and Meg was staring up at the sky with a half-drunken look of discouraged exhaustion. They were all wet through and smeared with muck and tobacco sap, even though Nate and Cullen had only been down here since half past ten in the morning. Every one of them looked as battered and defeated as the field itself.

"Mama? You goin' put dat basket down?" asked Gabe curiously, looking up at her.

Startled from her misery, Mary smiled at him. "Yes, dearest, and you can help me." She cast around. The foliage on the oak tree was only just starting to pale, not yet even showing yellow, and under its thick canopy the grass was only damp. She carried the basket to the tree and set it between two roots. Then she shook out the cloth that had covered the food and spread it on the ground. She wished she had thought to bring napkins, and she cast about for something to bring a little cheer to her makeshift table.

"Gabe, run and pick me some of those asters," she said, pointing off to the seldom-trod sliver of pasture that ran down towards the middle field. "Make sure they have nice, long stems."

The boy ran off, and Mary took the plates from the basket. She knelt down on a corner of the cloth and began to fill them, heaping out generous servings of each dish. She carefully peeled apart the slices of bread and set them prettily at an angle on the edge of each plate. She rapped each egg with the side of a fork and removed the shells delicately, tossing away the shards in the grass and setting the clean white orbs in the center of each plate. She laid them out as if setting a board for company, forks tucked neatly beside. Then she brought over the bottle of coffee and the dippers, and as an afterthought one of the pails of drinking water as well. This last she set just past the edge of the cloth.

Gabe came back, arms full of bright yellow blossoms like dewy stars. He had been so diligent in ensuring long stems that two or three of them had been pulled out by the roots. Mary broke off the muddy tangles from these, shook the water from the petals, and quickly plaited the stems into a wreath, which she set in the center of the cloth. As she had hoped her simple centerpiece added a spot of brightness in the indifferent gloom of the day. She sat back upon her heels, smoothing the dampened skirts of her work dress, and surveyed the effect with satisfaction.

Nate and Meg were out of the row now, toting their pole to the edge of the rise and lying it carefully down. They looked towards Mary and hesitated, lingering instead until Cullen and Elijah joined them. When Cullen saw that his wife and son had not simply left the food and retreated to the house, he frowned and started down the length of the field towards them.

"You'll get wet," he said as he plodded up. Then his furrowed brow softened at the sight of the neatly spread meal. "Ain't this pretty," he murmured.

"I pickeded de flowers," said Gabe proudly. "Nice, long stems!"

"Rinse your hands and come and eat," Mary instructed. "You must be famished."

He gave her a long, inscrutable look, and then went to join the others at the pail with the red rag. Then he sat cross-legged on a corner of the blanket, curling his spine forward with a low, faint groan. Meg, Elijah and Nate all hung back, glancing uncertainly between master and mistress. They were accustomed to sitting with Cullen to eat their simple dinners, but Mary's presence was clearly unsettling.

"Please sit down," Mary said. "I'm sure you're all hungry after working so hard."

The three darkies exchanged uneasy glances. Mary wondered whether she might not have been wiser just to withdraw to the house. She went so far as to take hold of her skirts so that she might take her leave, and then she remembered Bethel's instruction that she should try to get Cullen to sit and rest a little while. He had his fork in his hand already, and the tines kept twitching towards the food. If she left he would simply devour it as quickly as he could and hurry right back into the muck.

"Please sit," she said again. Something of her anxiousness must have shown in her voice, for Meg's worried countenance grew suddenly serene and she folded her sodden skirts into a pad for her knees as she lowered herself to the ground.

"This a mighty pretty picnic, Missus Mary," she said shyly.

"Thank you," said Mary. "It isn't much, but I thought the day could do with a little cheer."

Meg looked over her shoulder and beckoned, and Nate knelt down next to her. He was still stiff and uncomfortable-looking, but the smell of the food seemed to decide him. He picked up his fork.

"'Lijah?" said Gabe, frowning in puzzlement at the aged foreman. "Ain't you goin' eat?"

"Yessir, Mist' Gabe, I'd sure admire to do that," said Elijah. "But you gots to sit down 'fore I can."

Gabe nodded solemnly and plopped down between his mother and father. Elijah lowered himself onto the edge of the blanket beside Nate, and Mary noticed for the first time how stiffly and slowly he moved. Poor man, he was too old to work fourteen hours a day in all weathers. And yet he did it without complaint.

"Tuck in," said Cullen, spearing several green beans with his fork and biting into them with ravenous haste. He took three more mouthfuls before anyone else started eating. Again it was Meg who made the first move, watching Mary from the corner of her eye as she did so. She broke off the corner of a piece of bread and used it to gather a small heap of stewed tomato.

As soon as she swallowed the two black men fell upon their meals, bringing the plates up into their laps and bowing low over them. Cullen had abandoned his attempt to eat in a civilized fashion, and was doing the same. Then he caught himself, looked up at Mary, and tried to straighten. He set the plate down on the cloth and nudged it nearer to Gabe.

"Here, son," he said, giving the child one slice of his bread. "Help yourself."

Gabe took a happy mouthful, and then reached out to pluck up a piece of potato. "I never et in de rain before," he said. "It ain't so wet."

Cullen chuckled, and the fine lines of worry faded for a moment. "It sure ain't this time," he agreed. "What you been doing all day, then, son?"

"Eatin' apples," said Gabe. He stuck two fingers into his father's tomatoes and sucked them clean. "Mama an' Bet'l makin' apple butter. They don' hit dem apples, dough."

Cullen looked questioningly at Mary. "The butter churn," she translated. "We hit the cream to make butter, so I've been told." She rumpled her son's damp curls. "But apple butter is different, Gabe, isn't it? We make it on the stove instead."

"Mm-hmm." The little boy was chewing another mouthful of bread. He said something around it that Mary could not decipher.

"That so?" said Cullen, frowning. His eyes moved again from the boy to the woman. "You should have waited 'til Nate and me could do that. Full ticks are awful heavy."

"They aren't, not really," said Mary, understanding now. "Just large and unwieldy. Bethel's as strong as a Shetland pony; we managed all right. And this way the bed's all made and ready."

"What'd you do with the straw one?" asked Cullen.

"Put it on the other bedstead, of course," said Mary. "There's no sense in emptying it out: it will be sweet and fresh for months, and we may have company again."

He grimaced. "You ain't extended any more invitations I don't know about, have you?"

"No," she promised. Nate was scraping up the last of his beans, and Mary scooped up a second helping for him.

"Thankee, Missus," he mumbled, only just pausing long enough to swallow.

Gabe considered the bread in his hand and apparently decided he did not want any more than the four bites he had taken. He set it down and patted Cullen's knee. The soaked oilskins squelched and Gabe's palm came away muddy. "Why's you so dirty?" he asked.

"Tobacco picking is dirty work," Cullen mumbled. He too was intent upon his food, and Mary thought miserably that she should have found a way to get the afternoon basket down to the field in spite of the guests.

"Bet'l goin' scold you," Gabe warned. "You ain't supposed to get in the mud."

"Bethel's going to scold _you_, darling, if you don't clean that hand before it soils your clothes," said Mary. "Go and rinse in the bucket before it gets on your clothes."

Gabe moved to get up, spreading his palms to plant on his knees for leverage, but Mary caught his wrist just in time and helped to hoist him with a hand in the small of his back. Gabe strode off to the pails. "The one with the red rag," Mary told him, and he paddled his hand obediently and then came back so she could dry it with her handkerchief. Gabe deposited himself in her lap, cuddling against her and craning his neck to look up at her.

"Ain't you goin' eat nothing, Mama?" she asked.

"I'm not hungry," said Mary. "I had a lovely dinner."

Gabe's brow crimped worriedly. "Didn' Pappy get no dinner?"

"Course I did, son," Cullen said. His lips were tight and there was a flare of annoyance in his tired eyes as they flicked to Mary. "This here's just a treat to tide us over until suppertime."

The others were all coming near to the end of their food, and Mary served up the last of the beans and the tomatoes. As these too vanished she brought out the tart, carefully sliced into four equal pieces. Seeing it, Nate dropped his fork with a clatter. He picked it up again hastily, abashed, and averted his eyes from Mary's smile.

"Just a treat," she echoed as she placed a slender wedge on each plate. "To tide you over until suppertime."

The slaves each murmured their thanks. Instead of attacking the pie as they had the other foodstuffs, each broke off a tiny forkful from the tip of their wedge and lifted it reverently to their mouths. Elijah's eyes closed blissfully and Meg's grew wide.

"Missus, this here got sugar!" she exclaimed. Then she pressed her blackened fingertips to her lips and her color deepened. "Beggin' your pardon."

"It's left over from last night's supper," said Mary. "It won't keep much longer, and in the damp the crust will go soft."

"But…" Meg began. She seemed to realize that it was not her place to argue, for she fell silent and took another small piece of pie.

Cullen, either hungrier than the others or less in awe of the offering, was already down to the last inch before the crust. He offered a generous forkful to Gabe, who opened his mouth like a parrot and accepted it. Cullen whisked the utensil out between his pressed lips and Gabe gave a muffled laugh. Cullen glanced at his hand, determined that it was as clean as could be reasonably expected, and drilled his fingertip in against Gabe's stomach. The boy squirmed, kicking the blanket with one little boot, and Mary hugged him.

"Pappy's going to tickle you," she warned. "Pappy's a fearsome tickler."

Cullen reached to play his fingers against Gabe's flank, and raised one knee as he rocked towards her. Her shoulder brushed his, the sticky tobacco sap catching at the cloth, and his wet hair slapped against her nose. Desire rose within her, and he must have felt the spark as well, for he murmured in her ear; "Pappy's gonna tickle _you_."

Gabe's howl of laughter drowned out the words from general hearing, but abruptly Mary remembered that the three field hands were sitting not two yards away and watching the entire performance. Tamping down her yearning for her husband, she made her own merry ascent up Gabe's spine with dancing fingers. He squealed and rolled off of her, his bottom landing on the edge of Cullen's plate.

Cullen laughed, rescuing the dish and the last mouthfuls of pie, and Mary smoothed her skirt as Gabe got up on his hands and knees. He scrambled to his feet and retreated beyond the pails. "You can't catch me!" he taunted eagerly.

The look of yearning in Cullen's eyes was brief but painful to witness. He longed to go running after his son, but he had neither the time nor the energy to do it. "No I can't," he called, remarkably cheerful. "I got to get back to work, but I'll tell you what. Sunday you and me's goin' chase all you want. I'll bet I know a couple of hunting games you ain't never played."

Gabe crowed delightedly and tried to turn a handstand. As he lacked Charlie Ainsley's length of limb and six-year-old coordination, he wound up doing little more than planting his feet in the grass, kicking his heels eight inches into the air and collapsing in a ball that rolled down towards the tobacco. He landed on his back, knees in the air, and thumped his feet against the wet grass.

Cullen watched him, grinning, then sighed and looked at the field hands. "Best get to it," he said, grunting as he started to push himself up.

"Wait! There's coffee," said Mary. "There was no room for cups, so you'll have to use the dippers…"

Cullen waved off her apology and took one ladle. The other he handed to Nate. Mary poured the dark fluid, still hot enough to give off a faint aura of steam, and held the bottle so that she could readily refill the vessels. Nate took a swallow and passed the dipper to Meg, and then to Elijah. Cullen cupped his palm under the bowl of his, holding the warmth of it close. He drank deeply and sighed.

"Just what we needed, Mary; thank you," he said.

"It was Bethel's idea," said Mary. She gathered up the plates. They had all been mopped clean with the last crusts of bread, and not a crumb of pie remained. She stacked them and placed them in the basket, then collected the forks. She brought out four of the apples and set them in the grass. "In case you get hungry a little later on," she explained.

"Thankee, Missus; that righ' kind," said Elijah. Meg nodded, and Nate was watching her thoughtfully.

When the last of the coffee was gone, each of the four laborers took a dipperful of water and got to their feet. The slaves went to collect the poles, and Cullen picked up the cloth and folded it for Mary.

"It's awful dirty," he said regretfully. "And your skirt's wet."

"It will dry," she said. She took the bundle and set it in the basket. Gabe was capering in the long grass now, and she tilted her head in his direction. "Our little man, however, is going to need a bath and a change of clothes."

Cullen chuckled softly, and looked at her face. His hand moved as though to stroke her cheek, but it was still sticky with tobacco juice and he let it fall to his side. "Thank you for bringing him down," he said. "I know Bethel would have objected."

"Not today," said Mary. She reached to straighten the frayed collar of Cullen's coarse shirt. Her fingers came away gummy. "I'd best get him back to the house."

He nodded regretfully. "I'll see you this evening," he said, as though making a promise to himself. Then he turned and went to help Elijah lift the half-laden pole.

Mary returned to the house by way of the tobacco barn, where she checked to make certain that Lottie had enough drinking water and to give the child the fifth apple. Gabe was fascinated by the view of the underside of the curing leaves, and they lingered a little longer than Mary had intended. Then it was back to the house to help spoon the apple butter into jars so that she and Bethel could get a start on supper.

_*discidium*_

The delight of watching his merry child faded far sooner than it should have done. Why he could not cling to that image Cullen did not know, but the mud and the tedium and the futility of his work dragged it out of him well before the shadows even grew long in the field. The tobacco was not ripening as it should have. There had never been much hope in the top field, where the hail had done its worst, but the western half of the middle field was sluggish, too, and every time Elijah took a measure of those leaves he shook his head wearily. They were all weary: worn out and heartsick and jaded with pouring into a crop that was obviously struggling the same backbreaking toil they would have put into a successful one. The melancholy that had only struck them near the end of last year's priming came early now, quite likely because they were all expecting it. And Cullen could not fight the doldrums in the others, because he did not know how to conquer it in himself.

It might have helped his spirit if the rain didn't keep coming back – never as fierce as on the day of the storm, but steady and persistent. The mud would just start to dry, and there would be a sprinkling in the night to stir it all up again. Today was the first time since the hail that they had had rain while working, but it didn't make much difference what time of day it fell. The tobacco leaves, tattered as sieves though they were, still miraculously retained their ability to hold cupfuls of water to pour on the pickers. The burning headache of lingering tobacco sickness was Cullen's constant companion now, though the dizziness seldom stretched beyond annoyance and his appetite was no longer suffering. He wondered if the others all felt the same way; particularly Nate, who matched him leaf for leaf and was equally unable to keep his clothes dry even on the sunniest afternoon.

The return of his appetite, though a sign that he was not on the verge of collapse, was a misery and a nuisance in itself. Bethel, wonder that she was, had managed to make the meat stretch to the very end of the Tates' visit, but in increasingly smaller portions. One ham, a few pounds of salted mackerel, and four chickens – two old layers and two healthy pullets they could not really spare – had fed eleven people for a fortnight, to say nothing of Boyd Ainsley's men. Now even that was gone. There was still a little salt pork: about four pounds, Bethel said, which meant there was less. That was in reserve for flavoring dishes. There had been eggs at breakfast, and no gravy, and there had been eggs to take for dinner. Mary had brought them each an egg with the much-needed afternoon repast. And there would be eggs at suppertime too. But somehow an egg just didn't stick to the ribs the way that bacon did, and the good of a meal wore off long before it was time for the next one. Cullen would have to do something to remedy the situation, or he didn't see how he could keep himself and his field hands on their feet through the long days. He didn't much like them eating up the bread in the afternoons, either. There was a good bushel of flour still left in the barrel, but it would not last forever.

At least the yams would be ready soon. They would need to start digging them in about ten days' time, if they were all to be out safely ahead of the first frost. The thought of a sweet potato, baked to mealy perfection with the good, dark skin crisp and the orange flesh glistening with melted butter made Cullen's mouth water. Yams didn't last much longer in the stomach than bread, but they were a mighty comfort to an empty belly nonetheless. The anxious thought that they could not dig yams _and_ prime tobacco at the same time only visited him briefly. He could not afford to think about that.

The sun began to set and the air grew cool. The rain was still trickling indifferently upon the land, and Cullen's boots squelched in the muck. He had to move carefully to avoid sinking in it up to his knees. He had almost lost his boot that afternoon, and had dragged it out half-full of mud and filthy water. His wet feet itched and his wet clothes chilled him. In this damp there was no question of burning the waste from the cornfields: the broken stalks, felled by the hail, were rotting there. That was no bad thing, according to Elijah, for what was it but a thick layer of mulch? But they needed to plow those fields for the winter wheat, and Cullen did not see how they could do it if they were crowded with moldering detritus.

As the light abandoned them and work had to be called to a halt for the day, they still had half-a-dozen rows left in the field. It wasn't so bad, Cullen told himself. They could be done those in an hour or two tomorrow, and then they would be able to go down to the bottom field again. He would be able to pretend, or at least to imagine, that his entire crop still looked like that: whole and broad-leafed and flourishing, money hanging heavy from straight, healthy stalks, just waiting to be brought in and cured and boxed and sold. He supposed a real farmer would just be glad some of the crop was left untouched at all, but he could not help thinking of what might have been and running over the events of the last fortnight as if he could have altered any of them with some choice of his own. That was the worst of it: the perfect inevitability of the disaster, without even the small comfort that he would be wiser next time and so avoid a second occurrence.

Lottie was waiting for them when they arrived at the tobacco barn. It was almost time to rotate the poles again, and Cullen found himself wondering whether he could justify doing it tomorrow so that Meg and Elijah could finish the six battered rows without him. It was an unworthy thought and he quashed it. He couldn't shirk from his duty, and dreaming about doing so was almost as bad. Still he couldn't quite keep himself from wishing. Moving the cured leaves was an honorable reason to stay out of the field: it furthered the interest of the crop and brought them one step closer to the end of the harvest. No one could fault him for doing something that needed to be done, even if he thereby avoided something else that he loathed a hundredfold more.

It was Nate's turn to take the first watch: Cullen's to sleep through the night. He was shamefully glad of this, too. It had been pretty near seventeen hours since he had dragged himself out of bed to sit the last shift of the night, and even if he had wasted the morning gallivanting off to Meridian he was still bone-tired. The next hour, spent pitching hay and hauling water and cleaning hooves by lamplight, passed in a blur, and he stumbled wearily to the back stoop, where Bethel had warm water and rags and the old quilt waiting for him. She had a bath drawn, too, but he was scarcely conscious of what he was doing with the nailbrush and the stinging soap. Yet somehow he found himself in his nightshirt and his father's smoking jacket, sitting at the dining room table without any fear of guests wandering in to plague him.

Mary sat with him while he ate, and Cullen cleaned his plate thoroughly, but he could not have said what he had been given or how it had tasted. His jaw ached. He must have been clenching his teeth through most of the afternoon. When Mary led the way to bed with the candle, the stairs struck him as an almost impossible obstacle. Somehow he managed to mount them, but he did not dare to stop at the nursery door for fear he would find himself unable to start up again. He shuffled around the foot of the bed and shucked the heavy, quilted wrap before crawling between the covers. His body sank deep in the soft feather tick and he moaned softly.

Mary looked up from the clothes press, from which she had been taking clean undergarments to lay out for him. "What is it?" she asked quickly.

"I missed my bed," he mumbled, burrowing further into the mattress.

"Aren't you glad that Bethel and I moved it now?" she asked, a smile in her voice. He heard the whisper of her corset-laces and the shallow _sprang_ of her busk. Footsteps to and from the laundry hamper. A puff of air to douse the candle. There was a cool draft between the sheets as she lifted the bedclothes on her side of the bed. She had put another quilt over them now: summer was over and the nights were sometimes cold. The mattress rippled only a little as Mary lay down, curled towards him in the moonless dark. Feathers, Cullen thought gratefully. Straw would have bucked and bounced and jostled no matter how she tried.

"You're a wonder," he murmured thickly. He was already slipping towards sleep. Her hand crept up the crest of his hip, stroking his flank before curling to settle on his breastbone. The warmth of her touch seemed to ameliorate some of the ache in his ribs.

"So are you," she breathed. "Standing so strong, keeping everyone together when they've had trials enough to tear them apart. I'm proud of you, Cullen. So proud to be your wife."

She shifted closer, her foot brushing against his shin. It was warm and soft and smooth as velvet, and it soothed his troubled spirit. Her hand moved up to his shoulder, drawing him still nearer. When she breathed her breast swelled to stir the ruffle of his nightshirt. He supposed he ought to reciprocate her embrace, but his arms were leaden after a day of hauling steamer trunks and reining in eager horses and picking, picking, picking ragged tobacco. He could not quite bestir himself.

Her breath stirred his whiskers now, and before he knew what she was doing Mary kissed him. Her lips brushed his ever so lightly, ever so chastely, as if it was Sunday morning and they stood in the churchyard in front of half the county. His own tried to draw into the motion, to deepen the contact, but they were too slow. She was gone. Gone, but still near enough that the tip of her nose brushed his and he could smell the sweetness of her breath. The haunting aroma of lilac still clung to her from the sachet she always wore – replenished now from the petals her sister had sent. Beneath that simple perfume Cullen could smell _her_; the faint, vital scent of a real woman, a woman who loved him, a woman who would sit on the ground in the rain by a ruined tobacco field just to brighten his long day a little. He wanted to draw nearer, but his exhaustion and the wretched relief of lying in a soft bed pinned him down like a moth beneath glass.

Then her lips touched his again, more deeply this time. She was so near that their nightclothes had to be touching: he could feel her warmth through the oft-laundered cotton. His mouth moved instinctively with hers, and her hand moved to stroke the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. The arch of her foot slid down to caress his ankle.

"I love you," she whispered. "I'm so proud of you."

Her other hand found his where it was pinned near his waist, and their fingers twined. They kissed, the tip of her tongue flicking against her teeth. Cullen's eyelids were so heavy that he could not keep them open, and he thought drowsily that there was no better way to fall asleep after a long and weary day than in the arms of his wife. His head rolled sleepily down into the valley between their pillows, and his cheek came to rest on her collarbone.

Her _bare _collarbone.

His breath caught in his throat, and his left hand finally found the wherewithal to reach for her. He touched the soft contour of her hip, his callouses catching against the warm satin of her skin. For a moment of blazing intensity his mind worked like lightning lancing across a sky of dark exhaustion. Mary almost never disrobed completely, even when they lay together as man and wife. It was simply not the way things were usually done. A lady's nightgown was intimate enough, and no real impediment to the act of love. When Mary removed it – or encouraged him to remove it – it was a sign that she wanted more than the simple, rocking caresses of familiarity. It was a sign that she wanted to play, to share their secret and almost indecent passion. It was an invitation to perfect intimacy and to the fire of their love as it had been in the early days, before poverty, before toil, before worries and responsibilities and drudgery had weighed them down. It was an invitation to be as they once had been, long ago.

At his touch she slithered nearer, and her hip pressed against his. The cloth of his nightshirt was almost no barrier at all: he could feel the heat of her, and the thrum of her pulse thorough the vessel that ran through her stomach to her legs. He could feel the soft bulge of flesh below her navel, where the contours of childbearing still lingered like a testament to her courage. Her breasts were pressed against him now, and his hand slid as far as her waist with the will to caress them. But it could not find the strength to meet the rise of her ribs beyond the place where her corset had sculpted her in to a small, supple girth. He could feel every sensation of her body against his, but in his own he felt nothing but weariness and aches and a longing for deep, untroubled slumber.

She was kissing him now beneath the angle of his jaw, travelling down towards the place where his neck met his shoulder. Her legs moved again, enticing and yet somehow not arousing. He yearned for her, but he could not find the physical desire. It was like that moment when Gabe had called out to his father to chase him, and Cullen could only watch him run, longing for a time when he could have bestirred himself. Longing to be free of the bondage of the land that held his life and his loved ones to ransom against its whims.

"It's been so long," Mary murmured, her passion and excitement in every word. "We haven't… not really… not since… not since…"

She was too breathless to articulate her thoughts, but he understood. They had not lain together, not properly, since the early summer. Before he had first fallen ill. Before _she_ had fallen ill. Just about the time the tobacco-topping started. Oh, there had been stolen caresses; nights spent with limbs entangled in the wake of passionate kissing; sleepy petting of the sort preachers railed against in thickly veiled terms; but no true lovemaking. Never in their married life had they gone so long without. He had not thought about it. He had been too weary to think about it. And now that he realized, he was too worn out to put the matter right.

She was nestled against his chest now, and her hand had crept free from his to unbutton the front of his nightshirt. The opening reached only midway down his ribs, but the gap was sufficient for her to press her cheek against his breastbone, her breath stirring the fine hairs on his chest. Still sleep was dragging on him. He could feel his dreams, uneasy but inexorable, rising up to carry him away. He had to tell her, had to explain. Apologize. Yet somehow he could not speak.

Mary pressed closer still, until the heat of her enveloped his whole front. The long, aching muscles down the fronts of his thighs relaxed a little, responding to the comfort of her warmth. His sore hips loosened. His tense breathing eased. Only his back was still locked in the misery of the cold day of labor. From the base of his skull to the tip of his tailbone his spine was knotted with pain and fatigue, and his mind kept trying to slip away and leave the suffering behind for a little while, however much his heart ached to respond to Mary's caresses.

"Mary…" he breathed, managing somehow to make his lips move. Now he felt hot, all right, but he was burning with shame instead of passion. Nothing stirred in his loins, though his soul cried out for her. "Mary, I don't… I'm too…" He swallowed the hard lump of bitter regret and forced out the humiliating admission. "I'm too tired, angel. I don't think I can."

She made a muffled, startled sound, and he remembered too late that he had turned her down the last time, too. When last she had come to his arms, amorous and tender and so beautiful in the candlelight, he had pulled away from her and refused her advances. Then he had done so out of concern for her health, as Doc Whitehead had advised. Then at least he had been depriving them both in the moment of shared desire to protect her from harm. But now? Now he could not even show willing. What sort of a man was he?

Mary's head rose up, her mouth finding his again. She swallowed his next plaintive half-apology, and when their lips parted she whispered; "You don't have to. Let me."

Her hand slipped down along his tormented back, her thumb pressing deeply against the knotted bands of muscle. She kissed the corner of his nose. His cheekbone. The sandbag of a lid slung low over an eye he could not open. He could smell her. The sweet, beloved scent of her would follow him into the sleep he could no longer resist. Dimly he was aware that she was pulling gently at his nightshirt, drawing the cloth up over his knee, along the lean line of his leg, up towards his hipbone. It caught, the other seam pinned underneath him, and her other hand moved down to ease it free. It crept over his waist and there was almost nothing between them now, except in the span from breastbone to belly. Still he felt nothing but a deep drowsiness and the quiet comfort of her body against his. And his regret.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled before the capacity for speech could abandon him entirely.

"I love you," she breathed. Her hand slid over his hip to brush over his leg, her touch like the passing of a feather against his skin. Faintly, almost ethereally, she stroked the inside of his thigh. In that simple gesture, that single crystalline moment, his exhaustion was forgotten. His blood stirred at last and he pressed himself to her as she rolled onto her back to welcome him.

Somehow Cullen was not tired anymore.


	35. New Games

**Chapter Thirty-Five: New Games**

On Thursday morning Cullen hitched Gus and Betsy to the buckboard and drove into Meridian. He left as soon as it was light and made good time. As he was only going to pick up the lumber he had ordered on Monday, he did not trouble with his good clothes. Instead he simply put on his clean pair of work pants, the best of his coarse cotton shirts, and his old gabardine vest. He debated whether to trouble with a topcoat, and finally decided not to. His good one was too fine to wear while loading pine, and his other too shabby to in any way aid his appearance. It might have made sense to wear it for warmth, but the day was clement and the sky was clear. He had put on his watch, less because he needed it and more because the stout silver chain presented a visible cue that he was not entirely destitute – an important consideration when buying anything on credit.

In a fit of optimism he had brought his rifle. It was a reliable and meticulously-maintained Sharps, eight years old but polished and tended and accurate to well beyond five hundred yards. It was loaded, and Cullen had his cartridge pouch on his hip. He did not really expect to see any deer, driving down the main road in the rattling buckboard with a pair of overly conversational mules braying at one another, but if he did he had no wish to waste the chance. He couldn't be spared to go hunting during the week, and he doubted either Mary or Bethel would approve of him doing so on a Sunday however badly the household needed meat. The nights were still not cold enough for butchering a hog, but he was ready to compromise on smoking venison even if he had to ask his wife to tend the fire. He knew that Mary would be glad to do it, tedious as it would be to take time out of running the house and bringing in the garden and chasing after Gabe without Lottie to deputize. He knew she was just as concerned as he was about asking everyone to do without, hard as they were working.

As he had just about expected, Cullen reached Meridian without any sign of worthwhile game. The town was just stirring for the day, but the lumber yard commenced business early and the proprietor was in the office shanty when Cullen pulled up. He was a sallow-faced man with shrewd eyes and a habit of scrubbing at his nose with a greasy handkerchief that he brandished almost constantly between the fourth and fifth fingers of his left hand. As Cullen climbed down over the wheel he came hurrying out to greet him.

"Morning, Mr. Bohannon!" he exclaimed with the cheerfulness of one who sprang eagerly out of bed to greet each new day. "We've got it all ready for you: best pine sawn to order."

"I hope not, Mr. Skelton, as I ordered worst pine," said Cullen. "I ain't building no monument: just need some tobacco boxes."

"All our pine is good pine, Mr. Bohannon. I don't carry inferior stock," said Skelton with mock indignation. He winked. "I got just what you ordered. Right over here."

He led the way to a tall section of split boards, still yellow and smelling strongly of fresh-cut timber. They had been cut to the appropriate lengths, and inspecting the top boards Cullen was satisfied that it was indeed cheap pine: loose-grained and knotty and, hopefully, inexpensive. "Looks good," he said. "What do I owe you for this lot?"

"Cutting included, thirty-six dollars eighty cents." Skelton sniffled and wiped his nose. "Best price you're likely to get this side of Montgomery."

"I know it," Cullen said, trying to hide his discomfiture. His debts were mounting, and the fact that this was an absolutely necessary expense did not soothe him any. "Put it on my account, same as last year?"

Skelton shifted uncomfortably and hooked his thumbs into his suspenders. He cleared his throat; a deep, phlegmy sound. "Well, now, Mr. Bohannon, I'd like to do that," he said. "The good Lord knows you been a reliable customer for years: ever since you and me was just boys and it was our fathers done the trading."

"But?" said Cullen. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed warily. Whatever the man was about to say he knew he would not like it.

"Well…" Again the handkerchief flapped wetly. The clatter of boards came from the other side of the yard, where Skelton's two burly slaves were stacking hickory beams. "Thing is, word's got 'round that you took some harm in that storm the other week. Hail damage to the crop. Folks are saying what you got left ain't hardly worth shipping."

Cullen's blood ran hot. "Folks, huh?" he grunted. "What kinda folks?"

"Oh, you know. Folks. People 'round these parts," hedged Skelton. "I don't like to say where I heard it: I ain't a one to spread gossip."

"You might not spread it, but you're listening to it," said Cullen. He was trying to keep his temper from flaring, even though the effort of doing so felt like it might just be more than he could manage. He had been up in the night to take the second watch, and his broken sleep hadn't left him with much patience. "And you don't need to tell me where you heard it: it was Abel Sutcliffe, wasn't it? He didn't just mention it in passing, neither, I'll bet. He came out here to tell you especially."

Skelton said nothing to this, but his squirming discomfiture was answer enough.

"I see," said Cullen. "That's how it is."

"He came by to get a price for walnut flooring," Skelton squeaked. "It wasn't like he just stopped in to talk about you."

"You mean to slander me. Think about this, Mr. Skelton. There ain't been building on Hartwood since the gin house was finished six years ago. What's Sutcliffe want with walnut flooring?" It was all that he could do to keep his voice measured and reasonable. He wanted to roar with frustration. Disparaging him to the neighboring planters was one thing: it was spiteful, sure, and it made for some mighty awkward moments, but there was only so much real harm it could do with Cullen's reputation being what it had. But going to the tradesmen on whom he relied for consideration until he could get the tobacco sold, intimating that he was amassing debts he couldn't meet: that was downright foul.

"I don't ask those questions!" squeaked Skelton. He had taken a half-step back and was watching Cullen uneasily. "That's a good order; five hundred square feet of high-quality flooring. I can't risk losing a customer for being nosey."

That was just to say that he'd known the excuse was a thin one at the time, thought Cullen. Slowly and deliberately he blinked, trying to keep his impotent rage from blazing out through his eyes. He had to fix this. He didn't have thirty-six dollars to his name at the moment, and without those boxes he couldn't get his harvest to New Orleans. He needed credit, even if he had to beg for it.

"Listen," he said, his voice remarkably steady. "I've been a loyal customer. You've given me lumber on credit three years running now, and I've always paid you in full before the end of the year. My word's good, and you know it. Ain't that so?"

"That's so," agreed Skelton hastily. "But a man's word ain't no compensation for a failed crop. I'm sorry for your misfortune, Mr. Bohannon: truly I am. But I can't risk taking a loss like that with the way business has been. Folks ain't building the way they used to, and that's a fact."

Cullen raised his eyebrows and made a great show of looking over his shoulder. Beyond the wall of the yard, not twenty feet from the end of the lot, workers were swarming like ants over the skeleton of a warehouse. Further away, towards the railhead, shouts and hammers rang out. Off to the southern end of town, beyond the rows of shops on the main street, houses and businesses were sprouting up like weeds. While it was true that the contracts for sumptuous plantation homes had likely slowed since '57, there was certainly no shortage of custom.

Cullen brought his gaze pointedly back at Skelton, who seemed to be fighting the impulse to squirm. "My word is good," he said again, much more slowly. "That's why I ask you to believe me when I say this. We did get some hail in that storm, and we did take some damage to the crop. But I expect to bring in pretty near fifteen hogsheads when all's told. Maybe twenty. And a reasonable share of that is going to fetch top price. It is worth shipping, Mr. Skelton, and I aim to ship it. You know I can't do it without that timber, and that means I got business to give you. Next year I'll have business too, and the year after that and the year after that. I ain't never given you cause to doubt me, and I guess I just got to hope you'll take my word about my crop over the word of a man who's never put a dime in your pocket."

He tilted his head back, gazing down the side of his nose in what he knew was a very daunting way. He had something, so Bethel had been wont to say in his youth, of his mother's aristocratic looks. The effect, when put to the proper use, was not unimpressive. He unleashed it now because what he had just said was a gamble: he had no proof that Sutcliffe had never brought business here, and if he was wrong he had just bruised his credibility. And his credibility was just about all he had left to bargain with.

Skelton swabbed at his nostrils and snorted disconsolately. "You got to understand," he said. "It ain't that I don't want to keep your business, but I got to look out for my interests. I'm just trying to keep my family fed."

"So am I," Cullen said, his voice losing some of its air of fierce command. He had pushed past the worst of it: all that was needed was to drive his point quietly home. "You know I'll pay you just as soon as I'm back from Louisiana. You know that."

The other man's face crumpled. "I guess I do," he muttered. He wiped his hand on the seat of his trousers and held it out. "Thirty-six dollars and eighty cents, interest-free 'til the first of the year. After that it's eight percent a month."

That was ridiculous, but Cullen swallowed his protest. He would pay up on time: he had to. He couldn't survive without the good will of the merchants, any more than he could survive without bread. He shook Skelton's rough hand. "I'll be down here just as soon as I'm off that train," he said. "You'll be my first stop. And so you know, I don't hold it against you that you been listening to malicious gossip. A man's got to consider his own interests, and I understand that. Just next time do me the courtesy of asking before you jump to any conclusions, all right?"

"All right." Skelton looked at the piles of neatly stacked boards. "You want a hand loading her up?" he asked.

Cullen shook his head. "I got it," he said. "You go make a note of what I owe, or the ink won't hardly have time to dry before it's paid."

Skelton chuckled appreciatively from behind his handkerchief. "It's a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Bohannon. Honest it is."

"That's how I aim to keep it," Cullen said. Then he strode off to lead his team closer.

_*discidium*_

With the wagon loaded, groaning under the weight of the lumber, Cullen left the yard and trundled his burden up Main Street. He had originally intended to go to the hardware store for nails, because they were less expensive, but he had changed his mind. If Sutcliffe had been doing the rounds of the town spreading venom and casting aspersions on his liquidity, he would have a hard time getting credit anywhere he wasn't known. So he drew up the wagon in front of Townsend's Dry Goods and flung the lines over the hitching post.

The front of the shop was empty, and the chime of the bell as he entered seemed to echo off the crowded shelves. Cullen forced himself to meander casually down towards the corner where the small selection of tools and hardware was kept. He was glad that he had when the door to the storeroom swung open and Mr. Townsend came into the front of the shop, blotting his lips with a table napkin. He crammed it into his pocket and grinned at the sight of his customer.

"Good morning!" he said cheerily. "Seems every time I see you you're abroad earlier and earlier. Be turning up in the dark next." He slipped behind the counter and planted his hands upon it. "What can I do for you today?"

"I need two pounds of nails," said Cullen. "And I need to put them on account."

Townsend's welcoming expression wavered, almost imperceptibly, but this time Cullen was not caught unawares. "So he got to you, too," he said quietly. "Look, I ain't denying I had some bad luck, but I'm bringing in my crop and I'll be able to pay you, same as always, when it's sold."

The older man nodded. "I know that," he said. "You ain't never given me trouble or excuses; your credit's good here. But your crop's all right, then? There's something left?"

"Yes, there is," Cullen said, a little stiffly. He realized now that the man was genuinely concerned for him, and he found that almost as uncomfortable as the lumberman's suspicion. "I need the nails for the boxes to ship it. Two pounds of the half-inch spikes."

Mr. Townsend measured them into a paper sack, careful as always to keep his hands well away from the scale. He was another man whose survival relied upon his reputation for honesty. He rolled the top of the bag closed and put it on the counter near Cullen's hand. "Anything else you need?" he asked.

Cullen shook his head. "Just the nails," he said. "Much obliged."

"They're three cents cheaper at the hardware store," Townsend said. "I only stock 'em because they don't sell by the quarter pound."

"I ain't got credit at the hardware store," said Cullen. "You think they're likely to extend it now?"

The shopkeeper made a vague noise of assent. "What did you do to poison Mr. Sutcliffe against you?" he asked.

"Refused to sell him some land," Cullen muttered. It went deeper than that, but he was not about to repay gossip with gossip and lower himself to his neighbor's level.

"But you can't possibly work all you got with five niggers," said Townsend. "Why don't you just sell a little? It wouldn't do your pocketbook no harm."

"I ain't interested in selling," Cullen said coldly. "I got me a thousand acres, and I'm keeping it."

"You'll forgive me for saying so, Mr. Bohannon, but you just sound stubborn," the older man ventured.

Cullen grinned. "I've heard that before." He picked up the sack of nails and hefted it in his hand. "You want me to sign anything?"

Townsend shook his head. "Your word's good here. I'll just make a note of it for my own reference."

"Good day to you then," Cullen said. He stepped out into the sunshine and looked up and down the street. He supposed he ought to stop in and check if there was any mail, though he didn't expect anything. Mary's parents would likely wait to write until they got a firsthand report of their daughter's wellbeing from Jeremiah. He wondered what the man would say, and what Mr. and Mrs. Tate would think. He supposed it didn't much matter.

He deposited the sack of nails under the wagon seat, and started down the boardwalk. He had gone no further than the end of the next building when someone called his name.

He looked around, somewhat puzzled, and then breathed easier when he saw the familiar bay with its white star. "Morning, Doc!" he called. He came to the edge of the walk as Doctor Whitehead led his mount towards the hitching post. Following behind was a lively little Quarter gelding, on which was seated the physician's youngest son. Cullen smiled warmly. "Good morning, Ben."

"Good morning, Mr. Bohannon!" the boy said. He was fifteen, with a certain wild affability that Cullen recognized all too well. It was the bearing of a youth who had never known a mother's refining influence. "What brings you to town today?"

"Picking up lumber for tobacco boxes," said Cullen. He squinted at the doctor, who was silhouetted against the bright sun coming between the tailor's and the eating-house. "Out on a call?" he asked.

The older man shook his head. "Going down to the station," he said. "Congressman Barksdale's coming in on the ten o'clock train. Promises to be an interesting speech."

Cullen frowned, puzzled. "He's campaigning? He's the incumbent."

"I gather it's less to do with him and more to do with the presidential race," said the doctor. "Still, I never miss a chance to hear him speak. He's an inflammatory sort of man, but he surely does have a way with words."

"Never much cared for him myself," said Cullen. "Too flamboyant. Politicians ought to be practical. Reasonable."

"What's he s'posed to do if the other side ain't reasonable?" argued Ben enthusiastically. "Them Yankees in Washington keep trying to tell us we ain't got the rights we know we got! Why, I heard—"

"Cullen don't want to talk politics, son," Doc Whitehead said soothingly, casting his boy a fond, tolerant look. "Why don't you go on down there and find us a good spot?"

The boy cheerfully spurred on his horse, moving rather too quickly for a busy town street. Cullen followed him with his eyes until he neared the telegraph office, and then looked back up at Whitehead. "What makes you think I don't want to talk politics?" he asked.

"_I_ don't want to talk politics," said the doctor. He swung down out of the saddle. "We just had Theo and Jesse home for a week, and it's all the two of 'em could talk about. They've got Ben in a flap now, too. And I get quite enough of it on my rounds as it is."

"Then why're you going to hear Barksdale?" said Cullen. "Somehow I doubt he's goin' be talking about the weather."

"Ben: I told you," Doc Whitehead said. "And I really do appreciate a talented orator, even when I'm not much interested in what he's got to say." He took off his felt hat and leaned his right elbow against the hitching post, studying Cullen's face carefully. "You look wore out, son," he said softly.

"I'm tired," admitted Cullen. There was no use in trying to mislead the doctor. "It's picking time: everybody's tired."

"Heard you had Miss Mary's family to stay. How'd that go for you?" The kindly eyes were searching for something, but Cullen could not guess what.

"All right," he said, shrugging as much as his aching shoulders would allow. He wondered how long it would take that pain to go away once the harvest was in. "I didn't see much of them, really. Had a quarrel with her brother, but it wasn't our worst. So you had the boys home from college. Apart from the political talk, nice visit?"

"Oh, yes," Doctor Whitehead agreed. "Though when the three of them get talking they're loud enough to bring the roof down. I think they just about drove Ellie crazy."

Ellie was the family's mulatto housekeeper, and the only slave Doc Whitehead owned. She was renowned throughout the county for her patience: the three Whitehead boys were notoriously hard to handle. Cullen had to admit he was likely at least partly to blame for that. When Theo and Jesse had been young and impressionable, he had been the local hell-raiser and something of an idol to them. Ben, being younger, was simply following in the footsteps of his siblings.

"Pity we didn't get everyone together," said Cullen. "They could have argued with Jeremiah Tate on my behalf."

Doc chuckled, shaking his head ruefully. "Nobody needs that," he said. "There's enough arguing these days. Or rather, _agreeing_. Loudly and angrily. I don't know, Cullen. There's trouble brewing. I don't like it." He studied the brim of his hat and flipped it in his hands. Then he looked intently at the younger man again. "Everything all right up your way?" he asked quietly.

"You mean did we have a hailstorm take out the whole crop?" Cullen said caustically. "That's only a half-truth, like everything else Sutcliffe's been saying about me. Has he poisoned everyone in the town I might need a little consideration from?"

"Not me," said Doc Whitehead. "Though he tried. I ain't meant to take sides, Cullen, but you ought to know I will for you. I told him if he don't stop this talk he'd best look for a new doctor to tend to his wife."

Cullen flinched. "You didn't," he groaned. "Doc, you don't want him coming after you. He pretty near ruined my chances of getting my crop to market: only some slick talking saved me this morning."

"Well…" The corners of the man's eyes crinkled into a sheepish smile. "Maybe I didn't put it quite so strongly as that. But I mean to if he keeps this up. It ain't right, what he's doing. Talk's more harmful than anything in these parts, and he's just about as silver-tongued as the Congressman." He paused, then said; "What damage _did_ the hail do, son? Tobacco's mighty vulnerable."

"We lost some," Cullen admitted. "What we got left ain't what it should be for the most part, but I think we'll get by. So long as nothing else goes wrong. Surely God can't let nothing else go wrong."

"You know I'll always do whatever I can to help you," said Doc Whitehead gently, clapping Cullen's elbow. "I ain't the only friend you got, neither."

"I know that, too," said Cullen. "Boyd Ainsley let me have three of his hands for a few days to put things to rights again after the storm. Would've been in a tough place without them."

The admission startled him, but he soothed himself with the knowledge that it would go no further than Doc. Besides, he reasoned, he owed it to Boyd to make known where he could the man's generosity. "Look, I got to be getting back," he said. "The days are getting shorter, and the work keeps piling up."

Doc nodded. "I'll see you on Election Day?" he asked.

"Wouldn't miss it," Cullen chuckled. "If things is as hot as you say, I might just bring my gun."

"You give my regards to Miss Mary, now," said Doc Whitehead. He smiled unsteadily. "And don't push yourself too hard, son. Won't do to have you fall ill again."

Cullen didn't see any need to confess that he had been ill again, or that the sickness still lingered in his perpetually sore head and the occasional bouts of giddiness. He grinned again. "Only a few weeks left," he said. "Never thought I'd be so eager for winter."

The doctor sighed, looking up the street towards the station. The hum of a gathering crowd was beginning to fill the air. "Don't know that I would be, Cullen. Not for this winter."

Whether it was a reference only to the upcoming election and the turmoil it was likely to bring, or whether it was also a veiled reference to the bleak Bohannon prospects Cullen did not know or care to guess. He took his leave of Doc and went back to the wagon. Not until he had left Meridian behind did he realize that he had forgotten to go for the mail. He wasn't inclined to turn back: if there was anything it would just have to wait.

The sun was high and the day was warm, and if he had only been out here with his horses he might have enjoyed himself. Instead he had the mules, stolid and dreary and dull. He watched the rippling of their withers and the rocking of their broad hindquarters, and he hated them. It wasn't their fault. Gus and Betsy were good enough beasts, but Cullen resented them. They were nothing but drudges, bereft of spirit and imagination and drive. They were an ugly reminder of what he himself was becoming.

He was almost home, past the Ainsley land where the slaves were picking cotton with swift efficiency, when he heard a rustle in the undergrowth: something a good deal larger than a rabbit. It came from the thickly overgrown woods that belonged to the butcher in Meridian. "Ho!" Cullen called as softly as he could. The mules halted and the wagon creaked to a stop. Holding his breath and praying the noise had not startled the animal, Cullen bent down and groped for the rifle. He lifted it and got a good hold on the stock, levelling it below his eye and turning to brace his leg against the hard board seat so that he would be ready to fire. The noise grew nearer, and the bushes at the side of the ditch rocked. His finger found the trigger. Deer or bear, he would only have one shot to kill it. Right into the eye was his best chance.

The branches parted, and a slender dark limb slid out, picking for purchase in the long grass. Cullen's fingertip twitched as a wide, brown eye came into view. It was fortunate that his mind was swift and his body obedient, for he aborted the motion only just in time.

"Shit!" he exhaled sharply, lowering the rifle before his pulse could start hammering against his ribs. "What the hell you think you're doing, boy? You like to got yourself shot just now!"

The child stood frozen, eyes enormously wide. One hand still clutched the front of his shirt, which was pulled up into a makeshift apron heavy with hickory nuts. The other was clutching at his throat as he fought a silent scream. It was Eli, the boy from West Willows with whom Lottie had brawled. Hurriedly Cullen stowed the rifle on the floor of the wagon and raised his hands in a nonthreatening gesture.

"Easy, there. Easy. I ain't gonna hurt you. I was just hoping for a doe."

The boy swallowed painfully, but seemed rooted to the spot. "Please, Massa," he stammered. "P-Please, I didn' mean to trespass. I was jus'…"

"Just pinching hickory nuts," said Cullen, grinning. "Don't Mr. Ainsley feed you enough?"

"Yassir," said the boy. "But these here… they's a treat, an' the trees over Wes' Willows gets picked up in no time." He stiffened, thrusting out his jaw belligerently. "I didn' steal 'em," he said. "They's jus' lyin' there, goin' rot or be took by squirrels."

"Save your excuses for someone else," Cullen said, waving his hand. He didn't approve of darkies trespassing, but unless they did so on his land it wasn't any of his business. Anyway, scavenging nuts was just one of those things boys did. He and Nate had done just the same thing a quarter-century ago, and in just the same woods. "I ain't the hickory nut sheriff. I take it you were headed back to your plantation when we startled each other?"

"Yassir," Eli agreed with such vehemence that Cullen wondered whether he was speaking the truth. "I's jus' goin' back."

"Well, go on, then," said Cullen. "And mind where you go in the woods. It's hunting season."

With a scraping bow and a series of "yassir"s and "thankee sir"s, Eli retreated, scrambling up onto the road behind the wagon and pelting off towards the Ainsley property. Cullen watched him go, his amusement over the encounter blunting just a little his frustration that the boy had not been a deer after all. He had certainly given the child a scare that would make him think twice next time. He flicked the reins and drove the mules on. Turning into his home lane, he remembered too late that he had neglected to pick up a piece of candy for Gabe and Lottie.

_*discidium*_

The game was called hide-and-go-seek, and it worked like this. Pappy would stand up on the veranda, leaning against one of the columns in front of Mama. She was busy with the mending, but she had promised to make sure that Pappy didn't peek. Then Pappy would count all the way to thirty. This was higher than Gabe could count, and so he couldn't be sure Pappy didn't skip numbers, but Mama was meant to be looking out for that, too. Not that Pappy was a cheater, no sir! Gabe didn't believe that for a minute. But Pappy had grinned and winked and said somebody had best keep an eye on him, 'cause he was a rascal and he did love to win.

While Pappy was counting, Gabe would run and hide. He was allowed to hide anywhere in the house or the stable or the dooryard, but he couldn't go any further than the east fence or the well, or the edge of the sweet potato patch or the far paddock fence. And he couldn't hide in the toolhouse or the cellar, but anyway those were shut up and he couldn't get in. The kitchen was also off-limits, because Bethel was taking her Sunday nap. Other than that, though, Gabe could hide anywhere he wanted. Then when Pappy finally got to thirty, he would shout that he was coming, and he would look for Gabe. If he found him, Pappy won. If he couldn't, Gabe won. Then they'd start all over again.

It was a good game: even better than chasing. Gabe had discovered that he was a _very _good hider. The first time, not sure what to do, he had just hidden under Mama's chair. He had thought that Pappy would see him straight away when he opened his eyes, but he hadn't! He had gone off wandering to check the henhouse, and the parlor, and the bedrooms and the barn before coming back to the front of the house and looking under the porch and up on the roof and finally in Mama's sewing basket before declaring he didn't know where that boy had got to. But although he had won, Gabe wasn't satisfied. It hadn't been very exciting at all, hiding behind Mama's skirts as she rocked peacefully to and fro and darned the knees of Pappy's rattiest drawers.

So the next time he really _had _hidden in the henhouse, but the hens had raised such a racket that Pappy had found him right away and declared that perhaps they ought to make the henhouse off-limits, too, since it might upset the chickens and keep them from laying. They needed every single egg they could get, because there wasn't any meat to eat. Gabe didn't understand this correlation, because eggs didn't taste anything like meat, but it seemed very important to Mama and Pappy and Bethel. For his part, Gabe liked eggs and he didn't want to have to give them up just because the hens were upset by a game, and he readily agreed not to hide in the coop again.

The third time, he had climbed between the first and second rails of the paddock, careful to give Pike and Bonnie and them derned mules a wide berth, and had slipped into the barn. He had looked around for a good place to hide, and had just about decided to climb up into the buggy when he heard Pappy shout from the house. In a moment of panic, convinced he would be discovered immediately, Gabe clambered up the ladder into the hayloft.

He wasn't really supposed to be in the hayloft alone, but he didn't know why. He could climb the ladder all by himself now, without Lottie behind to catch him if he got too tired. And he certainly wasn't silly or babyish enough to fall off the edge. It was nice in the hayloft: warm and sweet-smelling and quiet. He liked to lie on his back against the big mound of hay, and feel it crackle beneath him. It was a good place to wait while Pappy, who despite his many talents didn't seem to be much of a finder, went looking for him behind the house again. Gabe could see him out of the hayloft hatch: a small little man like a tin soldier far below. It made him giggle to think of his tall, strong pappy small enough to put in his hand.

It had been a very good day. Pappy and Mama had not gone to church, because Pappy had to take the second shift in the tobacco barn so that Lottie could have a day to rest. Gabe had been displeased by this until he discovered that he was allowed to go and sit with his father while he minded the fires. Pappy even let him put wood chips on the embers, and Gabe was able to hand him the nails while Pappy sat cross-legged on the floor of the kiln, making tobacco boxes out of thin yellow boards. It was very special to have private time with Pappy, without Mama or Bethel around, and Gabe had felt tremendously grown-up.

They ate dinner late because Pappy was watching the fires, and then they had gone outdoors to play. Only Mama couldn't: she had to do the mending. She hadn't had time to do it all week, because she and Bethel were cleaning and chopping and stewing and pickling everything from the garden. They dug up onions and bulbs of garlic, brushing them clean and braiding their stems together to hang from the pantry ceiling. They brought in bushel-baskets full of turnips and carrots and parsnips. And they planted new rows of collards and the winter beans. Soon the summer beans and peas would be ready for picking, and then Mama would have a bowl in her lap all the time, shelling and shelling the hard, round seeds to cook all winter. It all seemed like an awful lot of work to Gabe, and he was glad he wasn't a girl and didn't have to do it.

He heard the front door of the stable creak, rattling on its rails as it was hauled open. Hurriedly he burrowed into the hay so that only his face and his knees peeked out. Eagerly he listened.

"Gabe?" called Pappy happily. "You in here? Where you at, son?"

His footfalls moved down towards the horses' stalls, and then up towards the mules'. Pike had wandered in and was lapping at the big trough. Gabe heard the _hush _of Pappy's hand against the horse's neck. "Here, now, you seen my boy?" he asked. "I know he's got to be 'round here somewhere, but hanged if I can figure out where."

Gabe giggled, clapping his hands belatedly to his mouth. He held his breath, fearing that he had been heard.

"What's that you say?" Pappy queried. "He might be over in your stall? All right then… _found you! _Aw heck, he ain't here."

Pike snorted and tossed his head so that Gabe could hear his mane crackling cleanly. "Maybe he's in the corn crib?" said Pappy. There was a rustling of dry husks from below. "Don't look like it to me. Where is he? Where's Gabe?"

Eagerly Gabe listened as the footsteps moved off into the paddock. Pappy hadn't even though to look up in the hayloft! From outside he heard him call; "Here, now, you seen Gabe?"

He was laughing so hard now that he could hardly breathe with the effort of keeping quiet. He crept out of the heap of fragrant grass and slithered on his belly so he could look out the hatch. Pappy was standing below, hands planted square on his hips. Lottie, wearing her pretty new dress that Mama had made, had just turned to look at him.

"He los' again?" she asked anxiously.

"No, no," Pappy reassured her. "We's playing hide-and-go-seek, and he's gone and hid himself so well I can't find him. I checked the nursery and behind Mrs. Bohannon's chair, and I checked the garden and I checked under the washtub. I even checked my pants pockets, but he ain't there neither."

Pappy was so silly sometimes, Gabe thought. He would never fit in his pants pockets! His hushed giggle was interrupted by a fearsome sneeze. It took him by surprise and he couldn't muffle it. As it passed, Gabe froze. Lottie was looking right at him, her head tilted back.

"Why, Mist' Cullen," she said; "he right…" She glanced at Pappy and stopped, but Gabe couldn't see why. All he could see was the top of Pappy's hat and the back of his body, all from an angle looking down across his shoulders. "He a right good hider, I bet," Lottie said. "Mebbe you ain' never goin' find him."

"Maybe I ain't," said Pappy. He cupped a hand to his mouth. "Here that, Mary? Lottie says I ain't never going to find him!"

"Oh, dear," Mama sang out. Because she was a lady and didn't every really raise her voice Gabe could only just make out what she was saying. "I suppose you'll have to be the one to explain it to Bethel."

"Suppose I will," Pappy said, taking off his hat and dusting it across his leg. He strode towards the house and just out of view. "Can't think where he got to. Guess he whipped me again. Hear that, Gabe?" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "I give up! You win again!"

Giggling, Gabe climbed carefully down the ladder. He snuck across to the other side of the barn and crept around Bonnie's stall so that it looked like he had been hiding over there. Then he came marching triumphantly into the sunshine.

"Here I be!" he declared proudly. "You couldn' fin' me!"

Pappy jumped as if he had been tapped on the shoulder by a haunt. "Well, how 'bout that!" he crowed, swooping down to pick Gabe up. He tossed him skyward and Gabe howled with laughter. "Where was you hiding?"

"Ah-ah, Cullen," Mama said, smiling from the porch as she cut off a thread with her tiny scissors. "You're only entitled to know that if you find him."

"Yeah," agreed Gabe. He frowned thoughtfully, sneezed again, and asked; "What's 'titled?"


	36. Hartwood

**Chapter Thirty-Six: Hartwood**

When Mister Cullen relieved her of the morning watch on the tobacco fires, Meg hurried down to the quarters. In the quiet of her cabin she washed herself, combed her hair carefully, and put on her good dress. She did not often have occasion to wear it these days, for the last several weeks had been too hard and wearisome to leave her with any strength to go abroad on Sundays. The ceaseless, desperate work in the tobacco and the long days made longer by the necessity of keeping watch in the kiln were sapping her strength and smothering her spirit. She worked as tirelessly as she could, and she never complained. She owed that to her master, who had never shown her anything but kindness and who cared for the wellbeing of her child, and who worked just as tirelessly and uncomplainingly himself, even when he was sickening. Indeed, all that had been sustaining her through the long, hard days were her loyalty and Mister Cullen's determination. She didn't understand how he could keep up such unyielding strength in the face of calamity, but she was grateful that he had. She never would have been able to cling to her own hope otherwise.

Today, however, she was determined to go and see Peter. She missed him terribly; at cotton-picking time it was impossible for him to come to her, and she had been too weary to come to him. But last night had been her night to rest, and the morning watch never tired her as the nightly ones did. Having the first watch of the day, Meg was left with all the hours until sundown to spend as she pleased. Bethel would serve up dinner and supper, freeing her even of that obligation. She could pass over the pastures and slip through the belt of woodland and be on Hartwood Plantation and in the arms of her husband in only a few minutes. She took a last look around the cabin, picked up the little basket she had packed to take with her, and hurried out into the sunshine.

She found Lottie by the willows, picking autumn wildflowers to weave into her hair. The childlike portrait of the bedecked pigtails was a quiet contrast to the dignity of her new dress. The collar and the row of buttons lent a lady's grace to Lottie's gangly body, and with its voluminous flounce the skirt stood out stiffly enough that the absence of petticoat could not be seen. Missus Mary had done a wonderful job, and Meg was grateful. Not many plantation mistresses would have taken such trouble – or cut up one of her own gowns – for a girl-slave. At the sight of her mother's own pretty sprigged calico frock, Lottie's face broke into an enormous grin.

"You's goin' see Pa!" she exclaimed.

Meg smiled almost shyly. After so long between visits she felt almost like a girl again, sneaking down to the edge of her master's land to meet her lover by moonlight. "Is there anything you'd like me to tell him?"

Lottie tilted her head, considering this, and then shrugged. "You could say how Massa been trustin' me to watch the fires," she said. "An' tell 'im I ain't let 'em burn down once!"

Lottie was so proud of the trust Mister Cullen had placed in her. Meg worried sometimes about her girl spending the long days shut up in the hot barn, but it was a thousand times better than working in the tobacco and Meg knew it had to be done. There was simply no one else to do it. After the picking was done the field hands would be able to take turns with her, but until then they had to make do. And Lottie didn't seem to be suffering from anything other than a sense of self-importance born of the dignity of her position.

"I tell 'im jus' that," Meg agreed. "An' I'll tell 'im you sends you' love."

"Awright," said Lottie, turning back to her flowers. She did not even ask whether she might come, and for some reason that pricked Meg's heart. She would never let her daughter onto Mister Sutcliffe's land; not while she had breath in her body. And she ought to be glad that Lottie just accepted this, instead of asking uncomfortable questions or, worse, attempting to defy her mother's edict. Yet somehow it saddened Meg that her little girl took the separation from her father so much in stride. When Lottie had been small, their little family had been so close: gathering together every Sunday to eat and laugh and play together. For man and wife living on two different plantations, she and Peter had managed very well to give their daughter a sense of having two present parents. It was all that a pair of slaves could hope for.

Meg cut across the pasture to the tobacco barn, and hesitated for a moment before opening the door. From within she could hear the ringing of the hammer as Mister Cullen fashioned another hundredweight box. The finished ones were stacked against the north wall of the barn: some clean and yellow, newly made, and others grey and weathered. The boxes that had been purchased last summer had not all been used: the harvest had proved much smaller than expected. This year, scraping just to get through to selling time, they had not even been able to hire someone to make them, but at least the work of assembling the cut boards took some of the tedium out of the night watches. Meg wasn't as experienced with a hammer as the men, but she could manage if she went slowly.

She opened the door just as Mister Cullen said; "Hand me another: make sure it's a good one."

Meg hesitated, momentarily puzzled, and then she saw that Mister Gabe was sitting beside his father with the box of nails between his knees. He considered the array before him with care, and then plucked up his choice and handed it to the man.

Mister Cullen put it in place and drove it in with four swift swings of the hammer. Then he looked up, following the draft of fresh air from the door, and looked Meg over. "You're going to see Peter," he said.

"Yassir," said Meg, curtsying. "I means… if it all right with you, Mist' Cullen."

"You know it is," he said. He reached for another nail, and the child placed one in his hand. Without taking his eyes from her he felt for the place on the edge of the board and pressed the tip into the soft, fragrant wood. "Don't forget that he's welcome here, too. Whenever you want."

"Thankee, but he can' get 'way this time of year," said Meg. "Mist' Sutcliffe wouldn' stand for it. S'pose there was 'nother of them storms, an' him not on the place? Or a fire, or a high wind."

"You got a good point," said Mister Cullen. "I guess being foreman comes with a price, don't it?"

"Yassir." Meg didn't know what else to say. It was true. Peter had the respect of the other field hands, and a position of responsibility on the plantation. He had a little cabin of his own, and three changes of clothes, and a sturdy pair of boots. But with all that came restrictions that he had not been under in the early years of their marriage. He could no longer come and go quietly, at least not at planting or harvest. He was responsible for maintaining order among the slaves, and was therefore held accountable when disorder arose. And he was worth a great deal more now: so much more that it was impossible that Mister Cullen would ever be able to afford to buy him. Once, when Lottie was small and the first good crop after the disastrous one was in, Meg had harbored a hope that one day the Bohannons might purchase her Peter. Now, with his worth so great and their prospects so spare it seemed impossible.

"What's in the basket?" Mister Cullen asked. His tone was conversational, not interrogative: he trusted his people and did not immediately spring to suspicion as some white men did.

"I been savin' my apples the last three days," Meg said, quietly proud. "An' my breakfas' biscuits from this mornin'. Be a nice treat for Peter, I thought."

He frowned, and Meg was worried that she had misjudged. Perhaps he would not take kindly to her bringing food off the plantation, even if she had only taken from her own ration. Mister Cullen had never before shown such inclination: he fed his people as well as he could, and with almost the same fare the family ate; he did not complain when Lottie ate blackberries she was meant to be picking or grabbed a peach right off the tree. But perhaps this was too much.

"I don't like you depriving yourself," he said. "You got to keep up your strength so you're fit to work. You want to bring apples for Peter, you just ask Bethel to give you some. We got plenty to spare. We can afford to send him the odd biscuit, too. Or something from the garden. Tell Bethel I said it's all right."

Meg's cheeks grew warm. She was ashamed of her initial assumption. "I didn' like to," she said softly. "I know stores is runnin' short."

The pained look that tightened his features made her want to bite off her tongue. "Not that short," Mister Cullen muttered. "Not yet."

There was an uncomfortable silence broken only by the ringing of the hammer as he focused intently upon his work. Mister Gabe looked from his father to Meg and back again. Then he grinned up at the woman. "Look, Meg," he said proudly. "I's helpin'."

"You sure is, Mist' Gabe," she said, smiling broadly for the child. "I don' know what we'd do if we didn' have you 'round to help."

"Later on we's goin' play," boasted the boy. "Pappy promised. We's goin' chase all I want!"

"That's right, son," said Mister Cullen, a little absently. His attention was focused on squaring the corner of the box, and his eyes had the keen flinty focus they always exhibited when he was fixed upon the task of the moment. Still, Meg could see the mist of weariness within them, and the stoop of his shoulders. She wondered how he would find the energy to go charging after his tireless son, however much he might wish to. But that wasn't her business, and it wasn't her place to say anything. She took a backward step out of the barn.

"I's goin' get 'long now, Mist' Cullen, if there ain't no objection," she said.

"Go on," he said, offering her an affable smile. "Give my regards to your husband."

Meg thanked him again and took her leave, closing the door carefully and striking a straight eastward course. She passed the edge of the cornfield, fallen stalks mouldering in the mud, and skirted the north side of the top field. The tobacco plants had the odd, stripped look that they always assumed once more than half the leaves were gone. They were almost all the way through the prime middle leaves, and the range of quality was enormous. From the bottom field and the western quarter of the large one they had top-quality tobacco that would fetch an excellent price. The next half of the big field had yielded good-quality stuff that would have been considered worth selling even on a much, much larger plantation. As for the rest, Meg didn't know whether it was even worth picking. But Elijah said that Mister Cullen told him that even if they only got two cents a pound for the tattered and mud-spattered leaves they had to pick it. They needed every penny they could possibly squeeze out of the land.

She tried not to look at the field. She was sick of the sight of it. It broke her heart to see the ruin of their hopes and the ragged remains of Mister Cullen's frantic attempt to bring in a good harvest. Working the other two fields was not so bad, but this one seemed nothing but a waste: a waste of all the work they had put into it before the storm, a waste of the toil to pick what was left, a waste of their dreams and their patience and their worry, and a waste of her master's determination and sacrifice. It was easier not to look.

The pasture grasses tickled her ankles and whispered against her skirts. This was such a pretty stretch of land, here where the gentle rolling rises were painted in green and gold and tawny brown as the different grasses aged or ripened, and speckled with the bright blossoms of the autumn wildflowers. Here and there a little tree was growing, thin and supple as a pickaninny on the windswept hillside. Walking through this charming, open space Meg could almost forget that once all this land had been tilled and fruitful, filled with thousands of dollars' worth of tobacco worked by many hands. She scarcely recalled when the land had been in cotton: as Mister Cullen's father had aged more and more of the earth had been turned over to tobacco instead.

She came at last to the edge of the young woods, which had been left to go wild before she was born. It was a quiet place, cool and peaceful on a Sunday when the songs of the Hartwood cotton hands could not be heard. It had none of the tangled overgrown crowdedness of the stand of old forest between the Bohannon and Ainsley properties. The trees were all still in their young growth, tall though many now were, and the squirrels and birds and jackrabbits that lived here were eager and bold. Meg stepped over a stump where someone had cut a tree for fuel or fence-rails, and moved down the small, winding path that took her to the edge of Mister Cullen's land.

She emerged from the shade of the trees into the vast stretch of the Hartwood cotton. Looking around to reassure herself that there was no one nearby, Meg climbed over the low fence that marked the edge of the property and stepped between the rows. She gathered her skirts close to her legs so that she would not unwittingly dislodge any of the boles, and picked her way carefully through the field. The cotton plants had a dusty, sun-bleached smell, and the earth between them was almost firm despite the nightly rains. The mud was always less in a cotton field, because the plants did not hold water as tobacco did. The water sank deep into the earth or dried up in the morning sun, instead of showering down all day from broad green leaves.

Soon Meg came to the section that had already been picked. The slaves on the Sutcliffe plantation had fixed quotas to gather, and that meant that haste rather than precision was valued. Some of the boles had not been picked clean, and gossamer strands of cotton fluff danced in the faint east wind. When the first pass through the field was finished, the slaves would have to go back and glean these leavings – and woe betide the one who could not make his measure with what was left. Meg was glad that Mister Cullen eschewed such false measures of productivity. He liked a job done properly, even if it then got done more slowly, and he valued care over quantity. So long as his people worked diligently and well, he didn't complain about the day's yield.

Between the cotton and the slave quarters stretched the vast acres of yams and potatoes, drawing nearer and nearer to harvest. Meg skirted around the nearest field, not wanting to risk treading on the little hills with their precious treasure. She supposed it didn't matter so much to Sutcliffe or his slaves if a few sweet potatoes got crushed beneath a careless heel, but on the Bohannon plantation the whole family, white and black, was watching the yams with anxious eagerness. They had been without that staple of the Southern diet for so long that Meg almost could not remember how they tasted anymore, and without the yams they would face a very hungry winter. Sutcliffe could surely buy up whatever he needed if something went wrong with his food crops: Mister Cullen could not.

The smell of the quarters came to Meg's nostrils before she could even see the smoke from the cooking fires against the sky. It was the smell of cornbread and stewed pork, of cabbage and onion and collards boiling; the smell of dirty clothing and stale straw ticks, of unwashed bodies crowded into too small a space; of wormy logs and wet tarpaper and rusted old tools. The latrines were too near the cabins, and too few for the people who needed them, and the sharp pong of human waste was not quite masked by the bland smells of dinnertime. The smell of lye soap was strong upon the air, and on the sagging clotheslines between the cabins dripping, patched and ragged garments hung: the women had spent the morning doing the week's washing that could not be done at any other time during picking.

The cabins themselves were dreary little structures. Where the ones in the Bohannon quarters were built of sawed boards on stout wooden frames, with proper sills at windows and doors, these were made of rough-cut logs chinked with chips and mud. The bark had been left on when they had first been constructed and now, decades later, it was peeling and curling and in some places missing in great patches that gave the squat huts a dejected piebald appearance. Most of the chimneys were made of daubed twigs instead of brick or stone: they were prone to catching fire, and they did not keep a good draft. The roofs were meant to be of shake wood, but they had been inadequately maintained over the years and were patched with tarpaper and oilcloth. They let in the rain. For windows there were nothing but coarse holes sawn in the log walls and covered in winter by squares of scraped rawhide: no shutters, no curtains, not even a sill on which to cool a loaf of cornbread. Some of the cabins did not even have doors: ragged sheets of canvas pegged over them provided the only modicum of privacy. Almost all of these were pulled back now, to let out the heat of open-fire cooking or to catch whatever fresh air they could.

There were few people to be seen. The women were cleaning up after the noon meal, and anyone who could would be sleeping. There were three little children squatting in the dirt and drawing with sticks: two girls and a boy. All three were naked, for their only frocks were drying on the clotheslines, and their golden-brown bodies told Meg that they were at the very least half-siblings. Their mothers, poor little girls that they were, were nowhere to be seen.

An old uncle was sitting in the door of one of the cabins, puffing at a pipe full of rabbit-tobacco. He squinted aged eyes at Meg and nodded in greeting. She smiled for him. She was well known here; she had been a regular visitor for twelve years. Two boys, a year or two older than Lottie, went running past her wearing nothing but flour-sack drawers: no doubt bound for the swimming hole. Their bodies were already roped with the muscles of young field hands: they worked the cotton.

In the doorway of the next hovel sat a young man, feet planted wide and arms crossed over his knees. His head was bowed low, but Meg recognized him at once: Pait, nineteen and newly married to seventeen-year-old Minervy. He was a thin, rangy boy with well-muscled arms and shoulders but lean legs and ribs that showed starkly with the skinniness of boyhood. These ribs were heaving shallowly now, and as Meg drew near she could see why. His back was a mass of bloody wheals, some of them crusted over but far more still weeping thin, bright blood. Hastily Meg knelt beside him, planting a motherly hand across his brow.

"Pait, honey, what happened?" she murmured soothingly, not really expecting an answer.

Pain-dulled eyes shifted to her, and his heavy lower lip quivered with the effort of forming words. "Meg," he said. "Ain't nothin'."

"It a beating," said a young woman, coming out of the shadows of the cabin with a wooden bowl and a stained but clean rag. Minervy was small and delicate of bone, with a way of moving that reminded Meg of a frightened foal. One hip clung to the sawn edge of a log in the doorway, as though to anchor her from being swept away, and her soft, frightened eyes flicked to Meg's. "They beat him."

"But why?" asked Meg. Pait was a good worker: Peter said he was one of the best, for his age.

"Say I come up short," huffed the boy, flinching as Minervy dabbed at his flayed back. "Two pound light. Thir-irty-nine strokes."

"When?"

"Yest'day," said Minervy. "Ain't no way he come up short: them scales mus' have been crooked."

Meg felt sick. It was a wonder that Pait was even well enough to sit up, after a whipping like that. She stroked his clammy cheek and set down her basket so she could curl her fingers around his hand. He squeezed tightly as the cloth moved over an especially sore spot. Minervy was moving as gently as she could, but the pain had to be terrible. Meg had never been whipped in her life; not even once. Oh, her ma had given her the odd swat on the rump with a spoon or a corn-stalk when she got into mischief, and once when she was fourteen Bethel had slapped her for talking back, but to be struck by a white person? To be tied to a post and beaten with a strip of braided leather until it raised blood? Meg could not even imagine what such agony and humiliation might feel like.

But even if Minervy suspected the beating was unjust, it wasn't wise to come out with it as she had. "You shouldn't say such things," Meg whispered. "Never know who's listenin'."

"Don' care who listens," Minervy protested, hoarse and tearful. "My Pait ain't never come up short in his life. He been a full han' three years now: pickin' like a growed man. It ain't right. Ain't decent. It ain't."

"But surely there no reason for you' overseer to do such a thing," Meg protested in spite of herself. It didn't make sense. Crooked cotton scales were not unknown, but because slaves always picked onto the same scales they didn't ordinarily run into the problem of coming short. If a scale was rigged to weigh five pounds light, a slave just picked a hundred and five pounds a sack out of habit. There was no sense in changing a scale's calibration without warning – unless an overseer wanted to entrap a slave for some reason.

Minervy's eyes were on her, and Meg's heart suddenly fluttered. The girl's expression was one of absolute desolation; of horrified, helpless despair and an even more ghastly guilt. Minervy felt she was responsible for this, and it was tormenting her.

"Oh, no," Meg whispered, understanding. "Oh, Pait, you didn' _say_ nothin', did you?"

She didn't think he had. The boy had more sense than that, but even more irrefutable was the fact that if he had, he wouldn't be back in his cabin being tended by his wife. If he had, he would be in chains in the little room off the woodshed, waiting to be sold off the place. It had happened before.

"No ma'am," Pait panted. "I didn'. I ain't no fool. All I done… all I done…"

He was cut off in a stifled cry as his young bride wiped away a plug of begrimed cruor from one of the deepest slashes. His knuckles were an unhealthy grey where they gripped his forearms, and his eyes were watering with the pain. Minervy withdrew her hand hastily, trembling and aghast with remorse. She looked down at the rag, now red with blood, and choked on a half-sob.

"Oh, Meg, could you… I can't… I can't hurt him no more."

Meg slipped carefully around the huddled body in the doorway and took the bowl and cloth from the girl. The water was warm, but not too hot: just right for bathing a torn back. She knelt down and set gently to work. There was no sign of the other slaves who shared the little hovel, but of the corner of her eye Meg saw Minervy's daughter sitting on the pallet in the corner. She was wrapped in a ragged old blanket to hide her washday nakedness: at five she was too conscious of her modesty to run outside with the little ones. She was watching the proceedings with eyes so wide that the whites glowed like silver rings in the gloom, and her tawny skin was pale. Meg turned to smile at her.

"Don' you worry, honey," she said kindly. "Your pa's goin' be jus' fine."

The child only looked on in frightened silence as Meg bathed her new stepfather's back. Pait was very brave, but the whipping was a bad one, and by the time Meg was finished he was half-swooning with the pain. With Minervy's help Meg got him to his feet, and he managed to shuffle the four steps to the straw tick on the floor. The little girl scuttled out of the way, clutching the blanket around him, and the two women settled Pait on his stomach with the corn-husk pillow beneath his cheek. Minervy stroked his brow and murmured soft comforts to him, and Meg stepped outside to fling away the bloodied water.

"Let 'im sleep if he can, honey," she said to Minervy as she came back in. "You gots any mallow root?" The girl nodded. "Let 'im chew a piece, then, an' mix up some cornmeal mush for supper." She looked down at the battered boy on the thin pallet. "I's goin' speak to Peter 'bout gettin' him on the sick list tomorrow. He ain' goin' be fit to work."

"I kin look aft' him, Ma," the little girl piped up. "While you's in them fiel's. Fetch 'im water an' such-like."

"Good girl," Meg said softly. "That's just what you'll need to do."

She wanted to say something more to comfort Minervy, but she couldn't do it in front of the child. Gently she took hold of the young woman's thin arm and drew her towards the doorway. Minervy shifted as if to resist, but she did not. Resistance had been stripped out of her long ago by cruel white hands and an old man's unholy passion.

Out in the sunshine, Meg led the girl into the shelter of the clothesline, well away from the gaping window-hole. She put one hand on a thin shoulder, and used the other to tilt up the shamefacedly tucked chin. "This ain't your fault," Meg said firmly. "You hear me, chile? This ain't your fault."

"He was waitin' fo' me," Minervy said tremulously. Her eyes were brimming with tears. "Thu'sday night it were my turn. Pait waited. Waited fo' hours when by rights he shoulda been fas' asleep. He hided in Miz Sutcliffe's 'zaleas 'til I come out, an' he brung me home. We mus' have been seen. It my fault, awright."

"No, no," Meg murmured, gathering the girl into her arms and pressing her head against her shoulder. Poor little child, her mother dead ten years and her father sold off to Alabama, her sister just as beaten-down and violated as she was. Meg rocked her gently, trying with all her might not to think of her own little girl. "No, honey, it ain'. It ain' your fault: jus' bad luck, that what it is. Jus' mis'ble bad, sad, wicked luck."

Minervy sobbed, but only once. Then her arm crept up between her body and Meg's and her thumb flicked away her tears. She didn't have much crying left in her: she had spent it all years ago. For a time she let Meg hold her, and then she straightened and drew out of the older woman's grasp. Her worn-out washday dress was rumpled, but she did not seem to notice. She fixed a brave look on her face, and she said; "I thankee, Meg: I truly does. D'you really think Peter can get 'im on the sick lis' for a day?"

"Sure he can," Meg promised. She knew she would be putting her husband in an awkward position. If Pait had been targeted by the overseer at the master's instruction, it might even be dangerous to attempt to give him a day to rest. But Peter was the foreman, and the sick list fell under his remit. He could argue that Pait was too valuable a field hand to risk damaging any further. She reached to squeeze Minervy's hand. "You wan' me to stay with you a while?" she asked.

The girl shook her head. "Tabby jus' gone to fetch water. She be back direc'ly."

Meg didn't know whether Tabby, who was twenty-one and almost mute, would be much comfort to her sister, but she could appreciate that the little family did not want a neighbor intruding on their misery when even their housemates had withdrawn out of courtesy or fear. She saw Minervy back to the door and took her leave, but not before giving her two of the apples she had brought for Peter. The handsome red fruits would be no comfort to Minervy or to Pait, but they would do the child some good.

_*discidium*_

Cullen woke up gently to the stirring of slender fingers in his hair. He blinked sleepily to clear the cobwebs from his eyes, and found himself looking up at Mary's fond smile. He was lying on his side with a feather tick beneath him and a wall against his back, and for a moment he didn't remember where he was or why. Then he felt the weight atop his left arm and smelled the downy baby-scent of his son, and smiled.

"I fell asleep," he said. His mouth felt soft and very warm: a sign of a deep, rejuvenating nap.

"You fell asleep," Mary confirmed. Her plait was coiled over the shoulder of her nightgown, and the light of the candle she held made her skin shimmer gloriously. She was beautiful.

"Why didn't you wake me?" he asked. He remembered now: tending to the horses and mules with Nate, the tasks made easier because on Sunday they could be done before sunset; then coming in for an early supper with his wife and son before bringing Gabe up to bed. It was a rare treat, not only for the boy but for Mary and Bethel, when Cullen could be the one to slip on the small nightshirt and listen to the little boy's prayers, and sing softly to him before leaving him to drift off on his own. Only this time Cullen hadn't left him: he had stretched out on top of the bedclothes just to keep him company until he fell asleep. He had intended to go downstairs after that and sit with Mary in the parlor for a while, but it seemed that the long days and the heavy labor, compounded by the rigors of an afternoon of keeping pace with a small child, had caught up to him.

"I'm waking you now," whispered Mary. "Can you get out of there without disturbing him?"

"I can try," said Cullen. He reached around Gabe's front with his right hand and cupped it under the child's cheek. Gently he lifted his head just enough that he could slip his arm out from under the boy's body. Gabe cooed softly as Cullen eased him down, then rocked briefly back against his father's chest before rolling to sprawl on his front. This gave Cullen a little extra space to inch down towards the footboard, propelling himself with his elbow. Once he was safely past his son's feet he sat up and slid to the edge of the bed. He paused there, still seated, and smoothed the bedclothes he had rumpled. Then he got carefully to his feet. He moved out into the hallway and Mary followed him, swinging the creaking door all but closed behind her.

"What time is it?" Cullen asked. He felt better than he had in weeks. His headache was almost gone, and the muscles of his back were much the better for having been pounded by Gabe's sturdy little feet earlier that evening. He had spent the entire day with his son, forgetting his troubles for a time in the convoluted delights of conversation with a three-year-old. It had been a good day.

"Time to go out to the barn," Mary said. "Are you going to wear that?"

He was still in his second-best day clothes; he had not troubled with the good ones because they had not gone in to church. He looked down at the rumpled vest and grinned. "Might as well," he said. "A little smoke and sawdust won't hurt 'em."

Mary nodded. "Do you want your coat?" she asked. "It's cool tonight."

"Won't be in the tobacco barn," Cullen said. Impulsively he curled his hand around the back of her head and kissed her, once on the lips and once on the dainty brown birthmark on the side of her throat. "I didn't mean to make you get up in the middle of the night to fetch me."

"I'll be asleep again in no time," she promised. "Bethel said she would leave you some custard in the kitchen, as you missed your dessert."

It was her turn to kiss him, lightly on the cheek, and then she gave him the candle and slipped away into the shadows of their bedroom. Cullen found that he wanted to follow her, and he grinned. Nothing for months, and then twice in one week? He really was feeling better. Maybe it was the relief of being able to settle back into the normal rhythm of life after two weeks' invasion from the North.

In the kitchen he found custard, as promised, as well as half a pot of hot coffee. He put on his boots and with the cup in one hand and the little dessert dish in the other he navigated the door with care. The waxing moon lit his way to the tobacco barn, and he nudged its door open with his shoulder. It had a latch, but that was only used during the rest of the year: it wasn't necessary at curing time, when the fires were constantly attended.

"Uneventful night, I hope, Meg?" he asked as he came in to the orange glow. He turned to smile at the woman, and stopped, taken aback. "Where's Meg?"

Elijah was sitting on the old crate, hammer in one hand while the other adjusted the angle of a board. Three nails protruded between his wizened lips. He set the hammer on his knee and swept them out so that he could speak. "Didn' show up to relieve me," he said, shrugging indifferently.

Cullen's brows knit together. "That ain't like her at all," he said.

Again Elijah shrugged, more expansively this time. "Been a long time since she gone over to Hartwood. Mos' likely jus' los' track of the time. I don' mind: got me the res' of the night to sleep."

"What about the cows?" asked Cullen. If Meg had not yet returned from visiting Peter – and he could certainly understand a couple in that situation losing track of the time – that meant she hadn't been in to milk the cows.

"Nate saw to 'em," said Elijah. "Sees to 'em every Sunday to give her a break."

"Does he?" This was surprising. Not so much because Nate was doing it, for he was sweet on Meg and often went out of his way to make her lot a little easier, but because Cullen had not known about it. With so few Negroes on the place, he thought he knew just about everything that went on, both publicly and privately. Apparently he was mistaken.

"You know that boy been carryin' a torch for her since the day she let down her skirts," said Elijah. "How Meg never knowed it I jus' can't say." He shifted the board another quarter-inch and drove in the last two nails in rapid succession. Then he set the hammer on the half-finished tobacco box and got stiffly to his feet. "G'night, Mist' Cullen," he grunted.

"Goodnight." Cullen waited until the door was closed and then sat down to eat. The custard was flavored with blackberries, quite likely the last of the fresh ones, and it made for pleasant eating. Supper had been more than six hours ago, and breakfast was still a long way off. Ordinarily he hated the chilled misery of the middle shift, but tonight he fell rested and well. He had slept an extra three hours, more or less.

It was when he reached the end of his coffee and picked up the hammer and another sawn board that Cullen's unease finally caught up with him. It wasn't like Meg to come back late. For one thing, Sutcliffe's overseers did not take kindly to alien slaves lingering around the place at night. They didn't seem to have much sympathy for a man and a woman who wanted to spend a little intimate time together after a long week. But then again, overseers worked hard at cotton-picking time, too, and they might be too tired to care – or abed with their own wives or women. What sat wrong with Cullen was Meg shirking her shift. He didn't mind it much himself, so long as it was not a common occurrence and the fires did not go untended, and Elijah had seemed happy enough to lengthen his suppertime watch into the night for her sake. But it was so _unlike _Meg, who was so devoted to her duty, to forget her work. It was unlike her, too, to put her own pleasure or her husband's before Elijah's rest.

He shifted uncomfortably and set to work placing the nails. He wondered whether he ought to go down to the quarters and see if she was in her bed. If she was, he could put his mind at ease and save the questions for the morning. But what if she wasn't? He wouldn't very well go over to Hartwood in the middle of the night to roust her out of Peter's bed. He couldn't leave the tobacco fires that long, and it wouldn't be fair to wake one of the others to take his place. And anyway Meg was probably perfectly all right; probably drowsing in the arms of her man right now, enjoying a togetherness she was usually denied. Surely that was it: that was the only reasonable explanation for her absence. Wasn't it?

Cullen couldn't think what could possibly go wrong with an arrangement that had been working smoothly for a decade, and yet somehow he couldn't shake the eerie feeling that something _was _wrong. He turned the box and laid the next board, but his mind was not on the work. It just wasn't like Meg not to come home.


	37. Missing

**Chapter Thirty-Seven: Missing**

Cullen woke abruptly from a shallow and troubled slumber. Something was not right. Then he heard the clatter of the stove lid below, and rolled onto his back cautiously, so as not to drag the bedclothes off of his wife. Scrubbing at his eyes, he slipped his left leg off the edge of the bed and tried for a moment or two to recall why he had cause to awake in a panic before his reason caught up to his instinct and it came back to him. Hurriedly he got out of bed and snatched up his clothes. He stepped into his trousers and tugged on his shirt as he slipped into the hallway and hastened down the stairs. His boots were by the front door, and he dragged them on so quickly that the stiffened leather creaked in protest.

Bethel was at the stove, tilting the frying pan with one hand to spread the small dollop of lard while she stirred the hominy with the other. He was across the kitchen before she could look up, and had his hand on the doorknob before she spoke.

"Where you goin'?" she asked. "You ain't had you' breakfas'."

Cullen shook his head. "I got to get down to the quarters," he said. "Meg didn't turn up for her watch last night."

Bethel frowned. "That ain' like her 't all."

"I know," said Cullen. "I need to know if she got home all right."

"You goin' lay her out?" asked Bethel suspiciously. "She ain't see'd her man in weeks: mos' like they jus' lose track of time."

"That's my hope," he said. "And no, I ain't goin' lay her out. I just… I want to make sure she's home now."

His inclination was to stride out swiftly into the predawn darkness, but somehow he could not move. Bethel was holding him with a hard, searching gaze. "What you goin' do if she ain't?" she asked.

Cullen's head shook narrowly. He felt again the unfounded dread, and his helplessness against it. "I don't know," he confessed softly. "What do I do?"

Bethel sighed wearily. "Sen' for the patrollers an' tell 'em you got a runaway."

He frowned, flummoxed. "Meg wouldn't run," he said. "If she ain't back it's because something happened to her. She'd never leave her girl behind."

"How you know she did?" asked Bethel. "When you las' see'd that chile?"

This possibility had not even occurred to Cullen. He tried to recall when he had last laid eyes on Lottie. She had been passing by the barn while he and Gabe were playing hide-and-go-seek: she had caught sight of the little boy through the hayloft hatch when he sneezed, but hadn't spoiled the game. Surely he'd seen her since then, hadn't he? He wasn't sure. She was free to do as she pleased on Sundays, and he had been too much occupied with his precious time with his son to take notice of her.

"Yesterday afternoon sometime," he said. "You?"

"While you was at supper: she come to fetch the fiel' hands' food," said Bethel. "Long time since supper."

"I don't believe it," said Cullen. "Where's Meg got to run to? What's she got to run from?" He treated her well. He had always treated her well. Surely she wouldn't betray his trust in such a fundamental and unthinkable way.

"The tobacco," said Bethel. "That what she got to run from. She wouldn' be the only one would run from it if he could, neither."

There was the strange portentous note in Bethel's voice that always meant she was making some larger point of great significance, but Cullen was to distracted to take note of it, much less attempt to decipher her meaning. "I can't believe she'd run."

"Easy 'nough to check," said Bethel. "If she down there fixin' breakfas' you know she jus' los' track of time. If Lottie in her bed, mebbe Meg got herself hurt comin' home by night. If they both gone, you'll know."

Cullen hesitated for a breath or two, struggling to say something intangible that was pressing to get out but could not quite manage it. Then he shook his head again, tightly and swiftly, and hurried out into the darkness.

The moon had set and dawn was still over an hour away, but he had walked the paths of this plantation since babyhood and he did not need sight to bring him down to the stand of willows and through the well-worn path to the quarters. He came out behind Elijah's cabin, only a vague black shape in the starlight, and found the corner of Meg's with an outstretched hand. He felt his way to the door and hesitated. If Lottie was asleep he did not want to wake her. Meg herself might still be sleeping, if she had come home late. But there was an unspoken law that the master did not simply force his way into the dwellings of his slaves; not without cause. Gently he rapped upon the door. There was no sound from within, and no light showing through the crack at the head of the stoop. He felt for the latch-string and found it, but that didn't mean anything. What cause did his people have to pull in the latch-string at night? They knew they could sleep safe in their beds; they trusted each other and they trusted him. Hoping that this was not a betrayal of that trust, he tugged gently on the string and heard the soft grinding as the latch lifted.

He stepped into the cabin, breathing lightly and treading still lighter. The air was hot and close: the shutters were closed and the cookstove was burning. The glow of the embers showed through the vents: someone had laid a banked fire so that it could be easily stirred up to cook the morning meal. As his eyes adjusted to the faint redness of the room he could see a mound beneath the coverlet on the broad lower bunk. He drew near and, fearful that his resolve might fail him, hastily lifted the blanket.

The motion exposed Lottie's rangy young body, shift stretched across a skinny back and legs tangled in the sheet. One arm was crooked over the top of her head, and the other splayed out towards the wall over the vacant stretch of ticking where Meg usually slept. Cullen could see the dip in the straw where her hip belonged, but there was no sign of Meg. His hand began to tremble, and he willed it to be still. Then he spread the rumpled edge of the quilt and lowered it gently over Lottie again.

He had just released his hold, fingers hovering as if to will the completed motion to be innocuous enough to allow the girl to sleep on, when Lottie stirred, rolled over, and sat up.

"Ma?" she mumbled sleepily.

"No," said Cullen. "Where is she? Do you know where she is?"

Lottie yawned enormously and turned a fist against each eye. "Mist' Cullen?" she said. "What you doin' down here in the middle of the night? Missus Bohannon, she ain't taken poo'ly, is she?"

"It's not the middle of the night; it's nearly dawn," Cullen told her. For some reason he felt compelled to whisper, though there was no cause. "Do you know where your ma is?"

"Nawsir," said Lottie, shaking her head. "She didn' come back fo' supper, an' she weren't back yet when it come time fo' bed. I thought she goed straight to the tobacco barn: it were her turn to take firs' watch. Didn' she come home for that?"

"No." Cullen's back molars ground against one another as he tried frantically to think what he ought to do. There was no way that Meg had run: even if she could somehow find it in herself to betray him, she would never leave her child. That meant that either she was still over at Hartwood, or some misfortune had befallen her on the way home. It was less than a mile from the Sutcliffe slave quarters to the Bohannon dooryard, and Meg had walked the way countless times over the years. But even familiar land could be dangerous in the dark. She might have turned her foot in a gopher hole, or struck her head on a low-hanging branch in the wild acres at the border of the two properties. She might have got herself turned around somehow and wandered off-course; Meg would have sense enough to stop and wait for dawn if she lost her way. It was even possible that she might have run afoul of a bear, though they weren't often seen in the settled areas anymore. She might be out there somewhere, in Sutcliffe's cotton or the pasture or the tobacco, hurt and frightened and alone.

Cullen could not bring himself to think of the other possibility. It was too outrageous, too hateful and spiteful and wicked even for Abel Sutcliffe. But he remembered the day in July when his aristocratic neighbor had come upon him in the tobacco, and how his eyes had raked lasciviously over Meg as she stooped with her wet skirts clinging to her legs and backside. Cullen closed his mind to that. With she-slaves enough of his own, surely Sutcliffe would not lay hands upon another man's property. And anyway Meg was older than he liked them, wasn't she?_ Wasn't she_?

"Mist' Cullen?" Lottie's voice was timorous now. He could see her wide eyes glinting in the faint stove-light: she was staring at his shadowed face, doubtless frightened by his lengthy silence. "Mist' Cullen, is my ma all right?"

"I don't know," he said. "I hope so. I'm going to go and see if Nate's had word from her. He's up in the kiln now. I don't want you to worry, now. Can you lay on breakfast for yourself and Elijah? He'll be up soon and he's bound to be hungry."

Lottie's shoulders squared. "Yassir," she said in a deliberately firm and grown-up voice. "Yassir, I can do that. I ain't a good cook like Ma, but I can boil an egg or two."

He was about to laud her when he reconsidered. The plan was ridiculous. The child was bound to be anxious, and he didn't want her waiting around in an empty cabin and worrying herself into a state. He was trying hard enough to cope with his own mounting unease: he couldn't be saddled with a panicking pickaninny. "Never mind that," he said. "You get dressed and shut up them stove vents. Then go to the house and tell Bethel to get on some food for you and the men. You tell her I said you should help her, and you do what she says."

"I allus do what Bethel say, Massa," Lottie chuckled. "She liable to wear me out if'n I don'."

This blunt assessment surprised Cullen into a grin. He knew what it was to be on the receiving end of Bethel's chastisement, after all. "Good," he said. "Tell her Nate and me are going to go and take a look; see if we can't work out where your ma is at."

"Yassir," Lottie agreed, bobbing her head vigorously. Cullen started for the door, halting when she added; "Who goin' watch them fires?"

He bit back a curse at his forgetfulness. "I'll wake Elijah," he said. "Time he was up anyhow."

He left Lottie to get herself out of bed, and hurried down to the old man's cabin. He raised his hand to knock, but the door suddenly vanished inward and the grizzled head of the erstwhile foreman appeared in its place, backlit by an old tin lantern. "Meg ain' back yet, Mist' Cullen?" he asked.

Cullen shook his head. "Get some pine knots and get up to the tobacco barn," he said. "I need you watching the fires while Nate and I start searching. Near as I can figure she must have hurt herself coming home in the dark. That make sense to you?"

"Yes, Massa, I reckon it do," Elijah said slowly. "On'y…" He stretched his lips over his sparse teeth and exhaled through his nose.

"Only what?" The words came out too harshly, and Cullen flinched as the old man's head drew back a good inch.

"On'y ain't it more likely one of them Hartwood overseers give her a hard time?" asked Elijah. "She ain' welcome over there after dark, an' it no secret Mist' Sutcliffe don' like you none. Good way to make trouble for a man, makin' trouble for his folks."

Cullen's stomach clenched and did a slow, uneasy roll. Then it was not just his imagination running wild: worries about Meg running into trouble on Sutcliffe's land had occurred to Elijah as well. "I can't go over there at this hour," he said hoarsely. "Anyhow if she is somewhere between here and there, hurting, we got to get her in out of the chill. We'll check the way she should have taken first, and once it's light I can go over to Hartwood and ask after her."

The corners of the old eyes wrinkled as Elijah considered this. Then he nodded. "I s'pose you's right at 'bout that," he said. "I's goin' fetch them torches, then. Be 'long direc'ly."

_*discidium*_

With her basque neatly buttoned and her hair smooth and tidy, Mary surveyed her candlelit reflection with quiet satisfaction. Behind her the dawn was showing pink in the window, and she felt ready to face the new week with a smile. Yesterday had been such a lovely day. Cullen had looked positively reborn as he played with Gabe, and he had found a way to fulfill his promise to teach the child new chasing games without wearing himself out running after a fleet-footed boy. Mary supposed that hide-and-go-seek was really more of a _hunting_ game than a chasing game, but it satisfied the same instinct in a boy and Gabe had enjoyed it immensely. He was too small to realize that his father wasn't really looking very hard for him at all, or that Cullen had known almost from the first exactly where he was hiding. After the initial successful foray into the hayloft, Gabe had returned there no less than three more times, much to his father's amusement. Each time Cullen had made a greater show of searching improbable places, and each time he had loudly and theatrically proclaimed his defeat.

So energized and boisterous had Gabe been after his string of victories that Mary had not expected him to settle down for his nap at all, but here too Cullen had worked his magic. He was held in such awe by their son that he could inspire Gabe to do almost anything at all, and he had come back down after only fifteen minutes in the nursery to declare that the boy was sleeping peacefully. Then he had settled in his rocker beside her, reading aloud from _Harper's Monthly_ while she patched the seat and left knee of Gabe's oldest play pants. They were almost too small to be worn, but not quite, and if mending them once more spared wear on his other clothes the time was well spent. The cloth from the Christmas barrel was a boon, but Mary wanted to save it for Cullen. All but his two good pairs, one day and one evening, were wearing hard, and he would soon be in patches himself. Once they had a little money they could take the cloth to the tailor in Meridian and have some trousers made to the latest fashion. There was enough cloth for four pairs carefully cut, Mary believed, if she didn't take any for Gabe.

When their son had arisen from his nap Cullen had settled himself on his stomach on the veranda and coaxed Gabe to walk up and down his back. Not that it had taken much coaxing: Gabe saw it as a game, and giggled uproariously as he did it, dancing a little from foot to foot whenever Cullen could not quite keep back his moans of relief. Mary had watched as the lines at the corners of his mouth and across his brow had lost their strained tautness and his breath had come deeper and easier. She only wished that Gabe could do something about his father's stiff and aching shoulders, for she feared her own attempts to work out that tension with her thumbs were inadequate. Cullen spent six days a week working his muscles to their limit: an hour's gentle manipulation could only accomplish so much to relieve that.

Nevertheless it had been obvious from Cullen's carriage and from his unadulterated good cheer at supper – taken early so that Gabe could eat with his parents – that both his cares and his pain had been lessened. It eased Mary's own worries to see him smiling and playful; he had had so little to smile about these last weeks. And the sight of him crowded into the little bed, curled around his son while he slept, was one that she knew she was going to treasure until the end of her days.

She thought of it now, as she quietly opened the nursery door on its creaking hinges and glided across the floor to draw back the curtains. Gabe was on his stomach again, arms akimbo and brown curls falling on the pillowcase. It would be time to clip them soon. Cutting Gabe's hair was always bittersweet: every trimming reminded Mary of that first one, just after Christmas. Gabe had mastered the use of the chamber pot and, as his pappy had promised at Bethel's suggestion, he had been breeched. Mary had found it quite emotional enough to lay aside the pretty little frocks for small shirts and trousers, but the cutting of his luxuriant curls had made her weep with pride and with the strange sense of loss that came from knowing her baby was now a boy.

He was getting older every day, too. They would be celebrating his fourth birthday this winter, and Mary could scarcely believe it. The thought made her want to gather his little body into her arms while he was still small enough to fit in them, but she restrained herself. Let him wake up gradually to warm sun on the pillowcase: he was the only member of the household who could enjoy that simple luxury.

Mary slipped from the nursery and pattered lightly down the stairs. She paused to open the front door, drinking in the cool morning air. The sky was streaked gloriously with painted clouds in orange and crimson and violet: one of those spectacular Mississippi sunrises that were her compensation for the brilliant New York autumns she had left behind. Though today marked the beginning of the fourth week in October, the trees were still green and the grass golden instead of brown. The flowers were still abundant: a thing unimaginable to a Northern mind. Only the magnolia was starting to show the first tint of orange: it was always the first to turn, just as it was the first to blossom. Mary surveyed the vista of her home and smiled before turning back into the house and making for the kitchen.

The commotion began as she passed into the dining room. There was a clatter of boots and banging furniture, the ring of a pot and the heavy sound of someone setting down a full pail of water. Then suddenly a phalanx of voices were all speaking at once: Nate's deep baritone, rumbling quick and angry; Elijah's ordinarily level timbre disjointed and unsettled; Bethel's stern, questioning tones; Lottie's unwontedly shrill exclamations; and Cullen, speaking very rapidly and very fiercely through the clamor until at last, just as Mary opened the kitchen door, he raised it above all the others and roared; "Y'all hush now, and _listen_!"

The silence was almost deafening. Five pairs of eyes, four brown and one blue, all riveted upon the master. Mary noticed only incidentally that his clothes and person were in disarray: the knees of his work pants, clean last night, were now stained dark with grass and dew, his shirttail was tugged halfway out, and one suspender was twisted as though it had slipped and been hastily dragged back. There were two dead leaves caught in his hair, which was wild and tangled and damp with perspiration. There were smears of pine tar on his hands. But all this was taken in only vaguely: she was looking at his face. He was very white, the muscles of his jaw and temples knotted with the effort of concealing some unspeakable worry. His eyes were hard, but beneath the shell of determination she felt certain he was terrified.

"Listen," he said again. His voice was lower now, but very firm. He looked at Bethel. "We found some footprints in the mud near the fence heading towards the darkies' quarters, but none coming back for a hundred yards in either direction. Near as I can see she didn't come that way, and I can't think why she'd go by the road."

Mary opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but Cullen had turned on Lottie and was speaking again. "She's likely all right: no cause to worry or jump to conclusions. I'm going to go over there and ask around, see if I can find out what's going on. But first thing's first," he said, turning now to the men; "we got to see to the stock. They got fed early yesterday on account of it being Sunday, and they're late getting fed now. Elijah and me will see to the barn: Nate, you go out and milk them cows before they burst."

"I can see to the horses an' mules mysel', Mist' Cullen," said Elijah. "You get on over there an' fin' our girl."

Cullen shook his head. "It'll get done quicker if we both do it, and I aim to take Bonnie with me. If I'm invading Sutcliffe's plantation, I sure as hell want to do it coming from the road on horseback. Get on now: hurry up! The quicker we're done, the quicker I'll find her."

"What 'bout breakfas'?" Bethel asked, coming so quickly upon the end of his sentence that she was almost – but not quite – talking over him. "Ain' a one of you had a bite to eat."

"Breakfast will keep," Cullen said. His eyes darted to the other two men, and then passed hastily over Lottie's anxious face. "We couldn't choke nothing down now anyhow." He drew an expectant breath, and when nobody stirred, said; "_Move!_"

Nate bolted for the back door, and Elijah followed hastily. Cullen would have strode after them, but Marry hurried forward and grabbed hold of his arm. "What is it?" she asked, breathless with imagined horrors. "What happened?"

Cullen's gaze flicked to the child, who was pressed against the corner of the kitchen table and still watching him wide-eyed. "Meg didn't come home last night," he muttered. "She went to visit Peter at Hartwood, and she didn't come home. We searched the route she should have taken across our land, but I don't dare climb over that fence the way things stand between me and Sutcliffe. If he has… well. Never thought I'd hope so hard to find one of my people lying in the woods with a broke leg."

There was something that he wasn't saying; she could see it in his eyes and hear it beneath words that were terrible enough. He had hoped to find Meg with a broken leg? What could possibly be worse than that? And if Cullen feared to cross onto the neighbor's land any way but by the road, why had he allowed one of his slaves – one of his people – to do so? Or was his caution new, spurred on by Meg's disappearance? That was the only explanation that made sense, but Mary could not think what Meg might have to fear from Mr. Sutcliffe. Whatever it was, it was plain that Cullen was fighting back some awful dread. Surely, surely he could not think that Meg might be dead?

Mary felt certain she was going to take faint. Her knees trembled so that the ruffle of her pantalets tickled her calf, but she locked them and straightened her shoulders. "I'm certain it's just a misunderstanding," she said, astonished at the calmness of her voice. "You'd best go and finish quickly with the stock so you can put all our minds at ease."

The tiniest of grateful smiles tugged at the right corner of his mouth. "Right," he said. "Look, no sense you all waiting to eat. Go ahead." Then he added, very quietly; "Try and make sure Lottie does, all right?"

Mary nodded and Cullen hurried out into the yard. She watched as the door swung closed, hiding his path from her view, and then turned as calmly and as capably as she could and put a hand on the child's shoulder.

In an instant Lottie's arms were twined tightly around her chest, squeezing against the whalebones. "M-Missus Mary?" she stammered. "Is my ma goin' be all right?"

Mary cast and imploring eye at Bethel and saw to her dismay that the older woman looked utterly overcome. Whatever had happened, whatever there was to fear, it was so far beyond Bethel's experience that she could not muster the quiet strength and competency that had made her the mainstay of the family for decades. Mary felt her own fear rising again, but she forced herself to breathe calmly. She put her hand on the crown of Lottie's head.

"I'm sure she will," she said. "I'm sure of it. Don't worry. Mr. Bohannon will find out what's happened, and he'll bring her home straight away."

"But he said he want her leg broke!" Lottie cried, her voice rising shrilly. "He don' think she tried to run, do he, Missus? My ma wouldn' run, not never! She wouldn' do such a thing!"

"Oh, Lottie," Mary breathed. The girl was frantic and was not thinking about what she was saying, but her words spoke to something more sinister than fright. This was the great evil of slavery: that a child should fear that the man who had lodged and fed and protected her all her life might wish her mother deliberately hobbled for attempting to run away. That such a notion could even enter into her head, born of half-whispered horrors perpetrated on other plantations, was deplorable. "Lottie, no. That isn't what he meant. He meant that he had hoped to find her, because even if her leg was broken she'd be safe in her bed now and we'd know she was safe. He knows your mother would never run away; why, she couldn't leave you, could she?"

"No!" Lottie sobbed. "An' she wouldn' leave Mist' Cullen, neither. She allus say we gots to be good niggers an' work hard to pay him back fo' lookin' aft' us so well."

Mary did not want to hear this either. She had long ago come to an uneasy entente between her firmly held belief that the system of slavery was inherently poisonous, and the reality of her life with these loyal and hard-working people for whom her husband felt genuine affection and responsibility. It was not that he did not deserve their love and dedication: it was that both would mean so much more if only they were freely given. If Meg, or Elijah, or Bethel, might stay or go of their own accord, instead of being fettered here by law, their desire to stay would be far more precious. And somehow Cullen, so insightful in other ways, just did not understand that at all.

"You need to sit down and eat something," Mary said soothingly. There was no other way to distract herself, and the poor child was trembling. "That's the best thing you can do to help everyone right now. We all need to keep up our strength."

She guided Lottie over to the bench and pressed her down. Lottie tried to wriggle away and to stand up again. "It ain't fittin', Missus," she protested.

Bethel cleared her throat, finding her voice at last. "It ain' for you to argue with Missus Mary," she scolded. "She tell you to sit, you sit." She was piling hominy on a plate, and she took a fried egg off of a warming dish. They had been using tomato preserves in place of gravy, and Bethel added a generous portion of these along with a fresh biscuit, and set the food down for Lottie.

The wholesome smells seemed to bestir the child, for she took the fork she was offered and began to eat. Mary stood beside her with a consoling hand on her shoulder for a minute or two, before she realized that Bethel had filled a plate for her as well. "You bes' eat up, too," she said. "Worrisome news ain' no way to start the day."

Mary shook her head, realizing all at once that there was something else that Cullen would need if he was going to ride over to Hartwood. He could not go demanding to know the whereabouts of his slave dressed in coarse work clothes, already soiled and disheveled. "I'm going to fetch Cullen something to change into," she said. "Mr. Sutcliffe seems the sort to put great store in such things."

Bethel's expression changed from one of addled worry to one of enormous respect. "So he do," she said. "Mist' Cullen sure did fin' hisself a clever lady."

Mary smiled weakly at the compliment and hurried from the room. She took the vest and trousers that Cullen had worn yesterday, one of his finer shirts, his silk cravat and his watch. She was hurrying back towards the stairs when her skirt snagged, caught in a small hand. She turned, only just remembering to fix a cheery expression on her face, to meet Gabe's steady but somber gaze.

"Mama?" he said. "I woked up. I hearded shoutin'."

"Yes, dearest," Mary said, disentangling his fingers from her skirt so that she could hold them herself. "I'm afraid we were very noisy, weren't we?"

"Pappy shoutin'," Gabe murmured. His distress was made obvious by his poor articulation of his thoughts. "Why?"

"Just to quiet everyone down," Mary reassured him. "They were all talking at once, and no one was listening at all. There's nothing to be afraid of, darling. Pappy just needs to go to see the neighbors; that's all."

"Charlie 'n Leon?" Gabe's expression brightened. He coughed shallowly and asked; "May I come?"

"No, dearest; the other neighbors," Mary said. "They haven't any children to play with: only grown up girls."

"Oh." Gabe wrinkled his nose to show what he thought of that. Then he cocked his head to one side. "Why you gots Pappy's watch?"

"He needs to wear it," said Mary. She shifted the bundle in her arms and let the timepiece slip through her fingers, gripping the very end of the chain so it swung near Gabe's nose. "Why don't you hold onto it for me? You can give it to him when he's put on his waistcoat."

This duty pleased Gabe, and he took hold of the watch with care, gripping it in one hand and slipping the other out of Mary's fingers to gather up the chain. He followed her down to the library with the dignity of a royal page carrying the queen's favor to her champion.

_*discidium_*

Bonnie had been fed first, and she was just finishing her breakfast when Cullen left the stable. As soon as she was sated, Elijah would saddle her and bring her up to the front of the house. Ordinarily Cullen preferred not to ride just after a horse had eaten, but it was a short journey and he would not let her gallop however she might want to. But before he went, he had to do something about his clothes and his hair.

If Meg had been detained by one of Sutcliffe's overseers, Cullen would have to go in looking the part of an indignant planter whose slave had been unjustly waylaid. If it was Sutcliffe himself who was responsible for her absence, Cullen had to be dressed well enough that he could not merely be dismissed when he demanded satisfaction. Southern affairs of honor were not, so far as he knew, customarily fought over slaves, but if that whey-faced bastard had dared to force himself on Meg then Cullen intended to kill him, and the only way to do that without arousing the wrath of the law was under the pretext of a duel.

Never in his life had Cullen seriously considered taking the life of another human being, and he told himself that he was not truly considering it now. He was not, because it was ridiculous to think that the man, however bereft of morals and decency, might do such a thing. There was no law to prevent him from pressing himself on his own slaves, not even the half-grown girls for which he had such an unnatural fondness. But there just about had to be _something_ on the statutes of the State of Mississippi against raping another man's servant. The thought of it, of even the vaguest possibility that Meg might have fallen into the spider's clutches, left Cullen sick with dread and shaking with impotent rage. If it truly had happened, he knew he would have no peace in this life or the next unless he buried a bullet in Abel Sutcliffe's brain.

He tried to smother his anger. He was letting himself be riled by a possibility he did not really believe – he _could _not really believe might come to pass. Just as likely, he tried to tell himself, there was some reasonable explanation for Meg's absence. He hadn't given up hope of an ill-starred encounter with a gopher hole: if she was lying lame and faint in the cotton, it would put her out of sight of the property line. The plants were five feet tall and densely spaced. It was possible, damn it. It was possible.

He cut across the front lawn despite the impressions left by his heavy work-boots in the overgrown grass. Someone would have to mow it soon, if anyone could possibly be spared for a morning. They were losing time as it was, and as Cullen leaped up onto the veranda without troubling to use the stairs he had the sense that he had forgotten something important. He nudged the boot jack out from under the bench with his toe and levered off his boots. He had just sprung sock-footed onto the second carpeted step inside the door when Mary appeared around the corner from the parlor.

"I have your clothes in here," she said. Her eyes were anxious but her manner was perfectly calm. He loved her for that. Everyone was in such a state of agitation, and he was trying so desperately to keep his own mind from wandering off into the weeds of the worst possible scenarios; it helped him cling to his own composure to see Mary so steady and capable. He swung down off of the staircase and followed her into the parlor.

She had chosen just the garments he would have picked himself: dignified and genteel, but without the pretention of his best clothes. Sutcliffe knew more than Cullen wanted him to about the straits of the plantation, and he would laugh at him if he dressed too finely. But equally would he scorn him if he turned up in his work clothes. It was harder to ignore breeding if poverty was made less obvious. Hastily Cullen shucked his pants and tugged off the rough cotton shirt, and let Mary button the fine one for him while he tucked it neatly and fastened the suspenders to his trousers. Gabe was sitting on the sofa, bouncing eagerly and holding Cullen's watch, but the gravitas of his elders kept him from speaking. He was growing up, thought Cullen. Even just a few months ago he would have kept up a steady stream of pattering observations and piercing questions.

Mary tied his cravat deftly, and had just turned to reach for the vest when both she and Cullen stiffened at the unexpected clatter of heavy wheels on the drive. Cullen did not stop to think that he was unshod and only half-dressed. He was aflame with the haste and anxiety of the morning and he rushed out into the entryway, coming around the stairs and freezing for a moment at the incongruous sight before him. A heavy prison wagon was swaying up the drive: high board sides topped with a cage of iron bars. It was the sheriff's Black Maria, pulled by a team of sturdy dray horses with two men on the box. For a moment that was all that he could see, but then his heart leapt to his throat and his body jolted forward onto the veranda as he recognized the Thoroughbred prancing proudly beside the ungainly vehicle, and the cold-eyed rider in the dove-grey suit.

Dimly he was aware of Mary coming up beside him, upright and dignified as a bold little clipper drawing up before a battleship, but his eyes were locked with Abel Sutcliffe's and the world seemed to narrow to the width of their mutual loathing. The older man was sneering in an ostensibly cordial manner, and he reined in his horse just short of the gatepost.

"Good morning, Bohannon," he said coolly. "I was hoping I might find you here instead of out in the fields. I've found your runaway."


	38. Irresponsible Ownership

_Note: Horribly, I did not make any of the legal statutes up. Not a single one. They were all found in Mississippi law at the time._

**Chapter Thirty-Eight: Irresponsible Ownership**

"Runaway?" Cullen parroted, not quite comprehending.

One of the men perched on the high seat of the wagon handed his rifle to the driver and climbed down. The motion drew Cullen's eyes and he realized with an uneasy lurch that it was Sheriff Brannan himself: a stern grizzle-haired man and a longtime crony of Abel Sutcliffe. He strode around to the back of the wagon and unlatched the stout wooden door, reaching in towards the floor. There was a frightened whimper and a rattle of chains, and the sheriff dragged his captive across the floor of the cage. She fell out onto the packed earth of the drive, a wretched cringing figure who tried vainly to shrink away from the man towering over her. Brannan swooped down and seized the chain of the shackles clamped to her wrists, and hauled imperiously upon it. Meg, struggling to get her feet under her, was dragged upon her knees for three steps before she managed to get up on her left leg. But her foot landed hard upon the soiled hem of the petticoat she was clumsily trying to clutch to her waist with one fettered hand, and she fell again.

"Stop!" Cullen commanded, his voice working more quickly than his mind. He was staring in numb horror at his faithful slave, unable to grasp what he was seeing. Meg was half-naked. The ties of her petticoat had been torn, so that she had to hold the garment to keep it from slipping down to bare her legs. Her shift had been slit up the back, and one shoulder seam was torn. The other hung far down her upper arm, and she was trying frantically to keep her breasts covered with the ragged, bloodstained remains of the garment as the sheriff tugged on the chain between her wrists to force her up from out of the crumpled, quaking heap into which her body had fallen. Her back was torn and glossy with blood, lash-marks livid and raw in the sunlight. Her eyes, ordinarily so calm and clear, were wild with pain and terror, and there were tear-tracks down her dirty cheeks. She was dazed and terrified, and did not quite seem to understand where she was or what was happening.

Brannan smiled cheerfully at Cullen's sharp exclamation. "This your nigger, then, Mr. Bohannon?"

"She's mine," Cullen said hoarsely. He wanted to run to her, to fend off the man who was clearly causing her such terror, but he seemed rooted to the spot. He could hear Mary's shallow, horrified breathing beside him, but she too appeared incapable of motion. "What the hell did you do to her?"

Meg's huge, desperate eyes found him and she gave a little cry, jerking involuntarily against the chain and causing Brannan to yank it closer so that she was tugged up towards him. Her precarious hold on her petticoat slipped, and the garment puddled about her knees. "Mist' Cullen!" she cried plaintively. "Mist' Cullen, please, Massa…"

The sheriff drew back his free arm and slapped her backhanded with such force that she fell on her side in the dust, bound hands still immobilized and flying from her torso as she tumbled. Her whole body tensed and a harsh, strangled cry of torment tore from her split and bloodied lips.

"Let her go, damn you!" Cullen found the mastery of his legs at last and bolted down the veranda steps. He closed the distance between himself and his woman in four swift strides, and wrenched the chain from Brannan's grasp. Hastily he dropped to one knee, letting Meg's bruised wrists curl in towards her body. He put a hand on her bare arm just below the shoulder, and she shrank instinctively from his touch. "Meg," he said gently. "Meg, what happened?"

"I found her skulking around my quarters," Abel Sutcliffe drawled lazily. He was watching the spectacle from atop Napoleon with something like detached amusement. "Obviously a runaway."

Meg, her senses returning to her at least far enough that she realized an ally was at hand, was scrabbling to push herself nearer to Cullen. Her hand clutched at his ankle, callouses snagging on his uncovered stocking. "Massa, please," she whimpered. "P-please, I didn' run. I didn'!"

"Hush," he whispered, bowing his body forward as if was not too late to shelter her from harm. The chain tugged at his fingers as she moved still nearer to him, and he stared down in consternation before thrusting it from him in disgust. It clattered to earth, affording Meg enough range of motion to drag the ruined chemise a little higher over her exposed chest. Cullen glared up at Brannan. "Get these damned things off her," he snapped. Trying to soften his tone, and failing, he said; "Meg, who done this? Which one of 'em beat you?"

The tremors ripping through her deepened. Her legs were curled under her now, and her spine was rounded low so that her head was pressed almost to her knees. The blood from her torn back had soaked her shift, and beneath the long rent it clung to her body, showing every contour of buttock, hip and thigh. She might as well have been stripped to the skin. She looked more like an animal than a woman, cowering in the dirt and weeping, shaking with agony and terror. Cullen knew that he had to do something, but for a horrible, indeterminable span of time he could only stare at the awful specter that had been his good, loyal Meg.

Around him the world went on. Sutcliffe smiled sanguinely. "I did," he said. "Under the law, I'm entitled to inflict ten lashes upon any slave found on my land without written leave from her master."

Cullen's eyes travelled up and down Meg's spine. The marks of the lash were deep and cruel, pitted here and there with dark holes in the flesh from which the blood welled in quivering domes before coursing down in lurid rivulets. Some of the marks were crusted with clots: hours old already. Others were fresh. Hastily he counted. "This here's more than ten lashes," he snarled.

"I gave her a few licks myself," said Brannan. "Figured I'd make a start and save you some of the trouble."

His tone made it plain that he expected Cullen to thank him. Glowering up at the man, Cullen wanted very much to rise and square off against him. At the same time, however, he did not want to leave Meg cringing at his feet. His hand found her arm again and he cupped it as consolingly as he knew how. He could not speak the words of comfort he longed to, for the three men were watching him: Sutcliffe coolly triumphant, Brannan satisfied with a job well done, and the deputy on the wagon seat dispassionately observant.

"Of course you have to punish her," Sutcliffe cooed. "The law compels a man to discipline his runaway slaves. Isn't that so, Sheriff?"

"That's so," said Brannan. He put his hands in his pockets and added with far too much of a predetermined air; "Seein' as how I'm here, I might as well bear witness. Whipping's the usual method, Mr. Bohannon, for a first offence. Where's your pillory?"

"Pillory?" Cullen spat. "I ain't got no pillory. And I'm not whipping this here woman: ain't she suffered enough?"

"But the law requires it," said Sutcliffe in mock dismay. "If she's a runaway, you've got to punish her. Where do you keep your whips? Oh, yes. You don't ordinarily hold with flogging, do you? Some nonsense about niggers respecting masters who grub in the dirt with them more than they respect masters who'll give them a few licks when they need it. Never mind, Bohannon. You can use mine: what else are neighbors for?"

From his saddle horn he lifted a coiled lash and handed it down, leaning low to reach. Cullen's hand closed of its own accord on the loop of leather, and he stared transfixed at it. It was a bluejay: a long, braided whip forked like a serpent's tongue into two long tails. Each of them was knotted every three inches along its length: it was these knots that had left the deep pits in Meg's flesh. The leather was dark and shining with wetness, and as the thongs rolled in Cullen's grasp he saw that his fingers were stained red. Convulsively he flung the instrument of torture from him, scrubbing his hand against the front of his trousers.

"She ain't a runaway!" he snapped, fixing eyes on the sheriff. "She had my leave to be off my land to visit her husband. He's foreman over at Hartwood." He turned his smoldering glare on Sutcliffe. "You know that."

"That's absurd, Bohannon," said Sutcliffe, all affronted innocence. "She didn't have any papers authorizing her to be off your land. Slaves aren't free just to come and go as they please, you know. They need your written permission. Under the law."

"That's ridiculous," Cullen protested, but his wrath was suddenly tempered by a cold fear. Was that true? He knew slaves needed written leave to go to town on their own, or to travel far abroad from their master's lands, but surely they didn't need them just to go to the next plantation! It hadn't been necessary before. For years Meg had simply slipped back and forth over the fence to see her man, an amicable agreement between neighbors.

But there was nothing amicable left between him and Sutcliffe, he realized with horror. There was no longer any reason for the man to cheerfully look the other way when the letter of the law might allow him to make Cullen's life a misery and to prey upon a woman innocent of any offence but belonging to a despised neighbor.

"No, it's the law, all right," said Brannan. Rocking back on his heels like a child called upon to recite before the school, he added; "_The owner of any plantation, on which a slave comes without written leave from his master, and not on lawful business, may inflict ten lashes for every such offence_."

"I asked her to produce her papers," said Sutcliffe in an infuriatingly reasonable tone; "and she was unable to do so. And naturally, Bohannon, fornicating cannot be considered lawful business. Begging your pardon, Miss Mary."

He tipped his hat, looking towards the house. Cullen's head whipped back over his shoulder. He had almost forgotten that his wife was witnessing all this. The sight of her was almost as unbearable as looking at Meg. She was white with horror, eyes wide and wounded, and she clutched the pillar at the head of the stairs as if she would fall if she did not. Her lips were trembling and she seemed utterly incapable of speech or motion. Cullen's conscience tore at him. He didn't want Mary to see this; not his sweet, loving, kindhearted Mary. He had tried so hard all these years to shelter her from the ugly things that happened when a man was too venal and godless to do right by his people. And now she was witnessing this abomination of justice on the very threshold of her home.

"She wasn't fornicating!" he exclaimed, blurting out the first protest that rose to his lips. "He's her husband, damn you! They've been married twelve years now!"

"I wouldn't know anything about that," said Sutcliffe. "Slave marriages have no legal standing, as you're well aware. All you've been doing all these years is putting your mare to my stallion without a stud fee. Again, ma'am, begging your pardon."

Suddenly Cullen was on his feet after all, only peripherally conscious of the way Meg's body jolted at his sudden motion. "You miserable son of a bitch."

He would have sprung forward and flung the smug wretch down from the saddle, but Meg still had a desperate hold upon his leg. Instead he squared his shoulders and tossed back his head defiantly. "You got no right to whip my people," he said. "You've looked the other way for years: you got no right to change your mind now."

"Legally that just isn't so," said Sutcliffe soothingly. "I've every right, haven't I, Sheriff?"

Brannan nodded. "The law's clear, Mr. Bohannon. Without your written permission that nigger has no call to be off your land, unless on lawful business. Carrying letters, delivering freight, fetching a doctor, such-like stuff."

"I sent her with apples," Cullen blurted out, seizing the first thing that sprung to mind. He pointed fiercely at Sutcliffe. "She was on an errand for me with a gift for his foreman. This here's an unlawful whipping, and I want him charged for damaging my property!"

He couldn't say what he hoped to achieve with this. He only knew that he wanted to turn the tables and to make the man pay for what he had done. The sheer spiteful hatred of the act repulsed him, and only humiliation would answer for it.

But Brannan was frowning at him, nonplussed. "You sent a gift to his foreman."

"Damn right I did," Cullen declared. "Delivering freight: lawful business."

"I'm afraid I just don't find that believable, Mr. Bohannon," said the sheriff. "And it don't explain what she was doing lingering about the place for hours."

"And it's my unfortunate duty to inform you that if that _was_ the business you sent her on, she didn't carry it out," Sutcliffe said, pursing his lips in a saccharine satire of regret. "I have it on good authority that she gave those apples to a certain worthless field hand and his girl instead. Still," he added with a languid shrug; "it's your place to punish her for that. If she wasn't running away then we don't need to bear witness to you whipping her. Surely you'll take his word on that, Sheriff? That he gave her verbal leave, even if he neglected to authorize it in writing."

"Why yes," said Brannan, grinning unpleasantly. "Yes, Mr. Bohannon, if you'll swear she had your permission to leave your land I'd be happy to concede she's not a runaway, and excuse you from the obligation – laid out under the law – to beat her for fleeing. Are you willing to swear to that?"

"Course I am!" Cullen said. Away to his left he hear the sudden indignant snort of a horse drawn up unexpectedly. He glanced sidelong towards the stable and saw Bonnie, tugging against Elijah's firm grip on her lines. The old man had stopped dead at the ghastly scene before him, and as Cullen watched he saw the expression of startled horror slip hastily into one of studied impassivity. Elijah was no fool. He could smell danger on the air.

"She was off your land with your knowledge and permission?" Brannan clarified needlessly. "You knew she was at Hartwood: you let her go there specifically, even though you didn't give her written leave. You consented to her wandering over there at large to bring some apples to her lover and spend time with him."

"Her husband," Cullen corrected stubbornly. "They was wed by a travelling preacher twelve years ago: paid him myself. They's married in the sight of God, even if the law don't acknowledge it."

"I need you to confirm it, legally speaking," said the sheriff. "Then I can go ahead and dismiss the charge of running away."

"You damned well better dismiss it," Cullen growled. "She was off my land with my knowledge and permission. I knew she was at Hartwood. I let her go there specifically. Would have given her a damned paper, too, if I'd thought for a minute this hateful bastard would give her trouble over it! Twelve years she been going over there, and never a word of complaint from him, and now all of a sudden—"

"You permitted a slave to go at large without specific lawful business to transact on your behalf," said Brannan carefully.

"Yes!" Cullen was exasperated now. Why was the man being so particular about this? He had to see to his woman: get her out of those chains and into her bed, get her covered up decent and have Bethel take a look at that back. Send Nate to fetch the doctor, tell Lottie her mother was home. Try to explain all this to Mary, whose anxious eyes he could feel on the back of his neck. He didn't have time for this nonsense. They had dismissed the notion that Meg was a runaway quickly enough the first time, moving on to the ludicrous assertion that Sutcliffe had the right to beat her because she wasn't carrying a written pass. Why were they suddenly hung up on the exact words Cullen had to say so he didn't need to whip her?

"Well!" The note of triumph in Sutcliffe's voice sent a thrill of unease through the nerves of Cullen's neck. "There you have it, Sheriff: that's a clear confession. He permitted his Negress to wander at large under her own will and discretion, unrestrained and unsupervised and without assigned lawful labor to carry out."

Brannan took his hands out of his pockets and dusted them together. "Why yes, Mr. Sutcliffe, I believe that right there is a clear confession. Don't get much clearer than that, can it, Bill?"

The deputy shook his head and sent a stream of tobacco juice arcing out into the grass at the edge of the drive. "Nawsir, Mister Brannan," he said. "Don't get no clearer than that at all."

_*discidium*_

In the last moment before the ghastly scene before her erupted into chaos, Mary was still struggling to make sense of what she was seeing. Cullen, bootless and half-clad, facing off against the immaculately-dressed Mr. Sutcliffe and the county sheriff. Meg, flung at his feet like the woman taken in adultery, wrapped inadequately in the rags of her shift with her back torn and bloodied. The whip, coiled like a viper in the dirt with Meg's blood drying upon it. The ominous mass of the Black Maria, the deputy with the reins in one hand and a loaded rifle slung over the opposite arm. The rattle of the chains, the thin wretched gasping from the brutalized woman, the malice and the panic and Cullen's desperate bewildered attempts to rebuff their accusations against his slave. It had the surreal quality of a nightmare, as if the quiet fabric of life had been torn away to reveal a writhing mass of maggots beneath. Mary could not move, could not speak, could scarcely breathe in her horror.

"Don't get no clearer than that at all," said the deputy with the unmistakable relish of a law man who sees a case laid neatly out before him.

"Just what I thought," said the sheriff. With a swift, bold motion that many men would not have dared to make, he bent towards Cullen's knees and grabbed hold of the chain between Meg's wrists. He dragged her up from her curled, defensive pose with such ferocity that she screamed, high and hoarse, as her shoulders dragged upon the flayed flesh of her back.

At almost the same moment a thin shriek came from behind Mary, and Lottie flew out of the house. "Ma!" she screamed, trying to fling herself down the steps. At the last instant Mary found the capacity for motion at last and flung her arms around the girl's chest. Lottie thrashed, fighting her and beating upon her breast with small, trembling fists. "Let me go! Let me go! That my ma! She hurt! She hurt!" she wailed.

Meg was struggling against the sheriff's attempt to drag her from her master, and Cullen reached out to seize the man's arm. They scuffled briefly, drawing too near the Thoroughbred. The horse's hooves clattered dangerously near to Meg, who was on her knees and trying to pull away from the stranger who had her hands pinned in place by his grip on the shackles. Sutcliffe scrambled to get hold of the reins, calling out anxious commands to the startled animal. The deputy, seeing his boss suddenly manhandled, dropped the lines on the seat beside him and raised the rifle. A choked, horrified cry tore the air as the weapon was leveled on Cullen, and Mary realized too late that it had come from her own throat.

"Get your hands off her!" Cullen was snarling, still struggling with the sheriff and apparently oblivious of the firearm trained upon him. "I told you! She ain't done nothing wrong! That son of a bitch whipped her for my mistake, and that might be lawful, but you got no right—"

"She's under arrest!" snapped the Sheriff. He was grappling one-armed with his assailant while trying to skirt out of his reach by dragging Meg between them. Her tenuous grasp on her shift slipped, and it slid perilously low, exposing half of one breast and most of the other. Her bare feet, tangled in her ruined petticoat, kept struggling to find some footing to relieve the awful pressure on her shoulders.

Mary wanted to run to her, but she was still trying to keep a firm hold on Lottie. Then suddenly the child went limp, falling forward over Mary's arms and quaking with sundering sobs. Mary turned her without releasing her hold, and wrapped her in a tight embrace, pressing the head of wiry curls to her basque and trying to shelter Lottie's eyes from the inhuman spectacle before her. "Hush," she gasped. "Hush, Lottie. Hush."

"You got no grounds to arrest her!" Cullen howled. He was incandescent with rage, and a feral bewilderment that radiated a sense of even greater danger. Mary had never seen him so overcome with emotion. He looked capable of any violence.

The deputy's finger moved to the trigger of the rifle. "You want to get your hands off the sheriff," he warned sternly.

"Tell _him_ to get his hands off my woman!" Cullen bit back. His hand closed on the chain of the manacle and he yanked, trying to wrench it from the other man's grasp. Meg's terrified, upturned face contorted in unspeakable misery; she knew she had somehow been the cause of all this trouble, but she could neither comprehend it nor put it to rights.

There was a scuffle of heavy boots in the grass, and Mary turned to see Nate coming around the corner of the house. He pulled up short, his face an awful rictus of horror. Any moment now he would be in the fray as well. Cullen tugged upon the chain again, and the sheriff tugged back. Cullen roared; "Let her go, damn you! I ain't goin' say it again!"

In another instant there would have been bloodshed. The deputy was poised to fire. Cullen's left hand abandoned its grip on the sheriff and closed into a fist. Brannan himself took another dancing half-step, using Meg as a barrier, and reached for the revolver in his belt. Napoleon was still pawing the ground perilously close to the terrified slave. And Nate took three long, leaping strides as Elijah, who was near the fence on the other side of the gate, dropped Bonnie's reins and tried to break into a run to intercept him. Mary could do nothing but stand there, holding fast to Lottie. But then a clear soprano voice rang out from the doorway behind her, cutting through the air.

"Pappy?" Gabe cried, anxious and frightened but with the clear demanding tone of a child who has never been denied an answer to his questions. "Pappy, why you goin' hit that man?"

Everyone else froze, but Cullen whirled, losing his hold on the chain and forgetting his intention to strike the sheriff. His sock-clad foot thumped against Meg's knee as he turned, but both were too far gone to feel it. His face was suddenly stripped bare of its hard lines, the fight gone from his stare and the defiance from his jaw. His eyes widened in surprise, and his mouth hung briefly agape as he fixed his gaze upon his son, standing with one small hand on the doorpost. The other still clutched the silver pocketwatch. His expression was one of worried confusion, his little bow mouth downturned in a frown and his eyebrows knit together high above the bridge of his nose.

Suddenly the combative tension drained out of Cullen's body. His heels, lifted in a pugilist's stance, dropped to earth with twin soft _thump_s. His fingers opened out of their fist. His shoulders lost their belligerent squareness and slumped a little. And he shook his head as if emerging from a daze. "I ain't, son," he croaked. "I ain't goin' hit him."

"Wise decision," said Brannan, recovering his power of locomotion before anyone else. "As I was about to explain when you attacked me, Bohannon, this woman is under arrest. She'll be compelled to appear before a Justice of the Peace so that you can answer for permitting your slave to go at large."

Cullen pivoted slowly back to him, his expression hardening as he turned. Mary's heart was in her throat, fearing that her husband would be rash enough to lay hands upon the sheriff again. That was in itself a deed worthy of arrest. "No," he said, with something like a bitter chuckle. "No, she ain't going nowhere except to her bed. You beat her for a runaway when she weren't one, Sheriff. You done enough."

Sutcliffe finally had control of his horse, now that the two men were not fighting right under the beast's nose. He tossed his head as if to restore his composure, and said; "The law clearly states—"

"That you got a right to give ten lashes to an innocent woman for want of a piece of paper," Cullen said caustically. "I heard you. But the law don't give you the right to presume a slave a runaway just because she's off her master's land. Maybe it'd be reasonable if you'd found her down in Meridian or hiding in the woods, but she wasn't. She was less than a mile from this spot right here, visiting her husband." He fixed steely eyes on the sheriff. "That sound like reasonable cause to assume she's a runaway, Mr. Brannan?"

The sheriff shifted uncomfortably, fiddling with his watch-fob. "I was informed she was a runaway," he huffed.

"Not by me you weren't," said Cullen coldly. "The law might say you can take any white man's testimony, but courtesy says you got to check with the owner before assuming a slave bolted. I made no report of a missing woman: you was acting without my knowledge or consent. Now you got an election to win. Lots of folks 'round here let their darkies go visiting. Think they'd like to know you whipped one for a runaway without even speaking to her owner?"

Brannan's mouth worked uneasily for a moment, and then he glanced at Sutcliffe. Mary wasn't certain, but she thought she saw the planter nod. Then the sheriff took a key from his left vest pocket and shifted his hold up the chain to Meg's wrist. "I don't have to take her into custody," he said. "She'll have to be bound over to appear, but you're right I don't need to take her now."

"Fine," Cullen spat. He watched with unyielding eyes as first one shackle and then the other was opened. As soon as the second one sprang and Meg's arm fell from it she scrambled on all fours away from the men, bolting like a frightened doe towards the fence. Nate flew forward to meet her. He had his shirt off, and he held it up to cover her chest. She hugged it to her body and let him help her onto trembling legs. Mindful not to touch her bare and bleeding back, Nate held her close with one arm across her front. His dark eyes were tender and he turned very gently to steer her towards the back of the house.

Mary shook her head convulsively. "This way," she whispered, flicking her chin at the front door. She held Lottie still tighter as her mother, leaning heavily against Nate's shoulder, picked her quavering way up the steps and into the house. Gabe watched, grey eyes enormous, as the bloodied woman passed him. Then he scurried across the veranda to cling to Mary's skirts. Lottie's arm slipped down from where it was pressed to Mary's breast, and cupped the crown of the little boy's head. Mary's arms were still filled with the girl, trying desperately to contain her pain and sorrow.

The sheriff studied at the manacles in his hand, twisting his wrist so they rattled. Then he looked up at Cullen, an unpleasant gleam in his eyes. "The law permits," he said with relish; "for me to arrest you instead."

_*discidium*_

They had trapped him. Cullen saw all at once how perfectly they had trapped him. Neither Sutcliffe nor Brannan had ever believed Meg to be a runaway. They had used it as an excuse to abuse her beyond what the law permitted for her actual infraction. And they had used it as a threat to draw out of Cullen the clear admission that he had permitted her to leave his plantation with neither supervision nor lawful business. And once he had admitted to that, they had both a justification for taking Meg into custody and a firm charge to lay upon him. He had to answer for allowing her to go at large, and the sheriff had a right to arrest his woman for surety of his appearance in court. Or, so it seemed, to incarcerate him in her place.

Cullen's heart blazed with frustration and self-loathing. They had led him right into the snare, and he had not merely followed but actually charged in at full tilt. In his horrified rage at seeing Meg so ill-used, he had been unable to think of anything but revenging her hurts on the man who had caused them. In his eagerness to corner Sutcliffe he had allowed himself to be outflanked. Obviously the two men had colluded beforehand on this strategy, and worse still it was painfully clear that Sutcliffe had known all along how Cullen would react. That he had proved so easily manipulated was the final humiliation.

"You ain't arresting nobody," he protested pugnaciously. It was the only protestation he had left. "I'll give you my word I'll appear, and Meg too: that'll just have to serve."

The deputy, who had lowered the rifle after Gabe's unexpected interruption, raised it again and edged to the near side of the wagon seat. Brannan grinned.

"Ordinarily you might do that," he said. "I've certainly been known to take the word of a gentleman and let it rest at that. But the truth of it is, Mr. Bohannon, you ain't behaved like much of a gentleman. Manhandlin' an officer of the law is a serious business, and while I ain't got a mind to charge you for it, seeing as you were understandably distressed and no real harm was done, it does tend to make me doubt your reliability. A gentleman's oath I'll take, but not the promise of poor white trash."

Cullen's eyes flew to Sutcliffe, glowering from beneath his brows. The wealthy planter was sitting languidly in his saddle, smiling benevolently down. Oh, they had definitely colluded, all right. Those were Sutcliffe's words, not Brannan's. The sheriff had neither the audacity nor the imagination for such things. His hatred flared again, but his strength was spent. He felt only the weariness of defeat dragging at him.

"What about a surety?" Mary spoke up suddenly, and Cullen twisted to look at her. She was standing with her back to the porch-pillar, Lottie hugged tightly to her and Gabe affixed to her skirts. So inelegantly encumbered and clad in her simple workdress without even a hoop, she ought to have looked like a poor farmer's wife, but her bearing and her serene expression made her every inch the lady. "A sum of money put up against my husband's appearance in court. Would that be acceptable?"

He could have gone running to kiss her. She was such a piercingly intelligent woman; level-headed and clever. How many wives would even be able to speak with dignity in such a situation, much less light upon a proposition that had eluded him entirely? He wondered suddenly how Mary even knew about such things.

Brannan plucked at his whiskers. "Well, now, what sort of a sum did you have in mind, Mrs. Bohannon?" he asked.

In spite of himself, Cullen cringed. There it was. Brannan thought she was offering him a bribe, not an earnest legal alternative to incarceration. What money they had might have been enough for an informal bail arrangement with an honest sheriff, but it was certainly not enough to placate a man used to taking backhand inducements from the likes of Abel Sutcliffe.

"I have ten dollars in gold that I can fetch right now," Mary said, courageous angel that she was, as though it were a hundred. "No, eleven. Surely that is adequate to keep our woman here with us."

Sutcliffe smiled enormously, showing his teeth to the second molars. Brannan threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Ten… no, _eleven_ dollars! And in gold! Well, ma'am, what about that! There's a pretty surety if ever I saw one. Eleven dollars in gold!"

Hurt flickered through Mary's eyes, but she did not let it show anywhere else. "It seems quite reasonable to me," she said; "seeing as you must certainly intend to have the case put before a Justice of the Peace before the end of the week."

"This week or next," the sheriff agreed. "It's a busy time of year."

"Well, then," said Mary; "as hire for a field hand's is fifty cents a day, eleven dollars so that we can keep Meg here when you intend to hold her for less than two weeks seems more than fair."

The simple logic of this calculation astonished Cullen, and likely would have overpowered the objections of any reasonable man. But Brannan, so it seemed, was not a reasonable man. He chuckled gleefully. "The law don't work that way, ma'am," he said. "I got to take someone into the jail until the court appearance, and if it ain't your girl it's your husband." He looked at Cullen and grinned toothily. "Of course, I _could_ still take the girl, if you'd prefer. Not much chance of that back healing properly in prison, don't you think?"

Again Cullen felt the hand of Sutcliffe in the other man's words. This was not right. This was not justice: not the rule of law on which the nation had been built. But he did not know how to fight it, and he could not rage against it again: not with his wife and his boy looking on. His eyes traveled to the manacles, then to the Black Maria and the armed deputy, and finally to the sheriff's face. He did not dare to look at Sutcliffe, though he could feel the planter's disdainful patrician gaze upon him like a freezing wind off the Hudson. He was defeated in this: there was nothing he could do now to guard his dignity or keep his honor, except to make sure they didn't drag Meg off, torn and tortured as she was, to languish in jail for what was, in the end, his mistake.

He had made this mess, all right. He was the one who had antagonized a dangerous man, not once but repeatedly. He was the one who had continued to allow Meg to pass onto that man's property and thus under his power. He was the one who had not troubled to take a greater interest in the letter of the law, and so protect her from the whipping he might have stopped with a scrap of paper. He was the one who had failed in his responsibility as the master to shelter his people from the dangers of the wider world. Overcome by the shame of those failures, he cast his eyes down to his feet. The soiled stockings, dark with the thin mud stirred up by the morning dew, clung to the ridges of his toes.

"Can I at least put on my boots first?" he asked, hoping that he sounded neither humble nor defeated.

Brannan smiled. "By all means. I ain't a heartless man. Get your coat too if you like: it gets chilly at night in the cells."

Cullen turned and walked with all the dignity he could muster to the foot of the veranda steps. He looked up at Mary, the apology he could not utter within hearing of these men flooding his eyes. She nodded ever so slightly: so slightly that anyone else would have taken it for no more than the bobbing that came with shifting one foot. She adjusted her hold on Lottie so that the child was at her side. "I'll go and fetch your vest and your coat," she said tranquilly. Then, guiding the two children with her, she sailed smoothly into the house and vanished into the parlor.

Cullen sat down on the bench by the door and bent to drag on his boots. He tugged until his feet slid into place: he did not have the spirit to stamp. Faintly from the back of the house he could hear Bethel's voice, undercut by muffled moans of anguish. He closed his eyes against the thought of the shredded skin of Meg's back that had never even known the harmless sting of a riding crop, and wished he could stop his ears against the sound of her suffering. But Brannan was watching him, and the deputy was on the lookout, and Sutcliffe was studying his every movement with ill-concealed glee.

Mary emerged from the parlor with Cullen's vest, and took his second-best coat from the peg by the door, where it sat in case of unexpected visitors. She held each open for him in turn, hastening to fasten the buttons for him herself. It was a simple wifely gesture, doubtless interpreted by the onlooking men as a sign of her devotion, but Cullen knew why she was doing it. She thought his hands might shake, overcome as he was by helpless anger and burning frustration and the bitter gall of defeat. She was right.

_*discidium*_

Mary fastened the last button and smoothed the collar of Cullen's topcoat. Then she stepped back so that he could get to his feet. He stood up smoothly, his expression unreadable. She wanted to say something – anything – to reassure him, but what did one say at a time like this? The three men were watching, and at the gatepost Elijah stood with his eyes downcast. She wondered if the old man was as overcome with numb dismay as she was. She could not quite believe this was happening. Was that man truly going to arrest Cullen, her Cullen, and haul him off to languish in jail until a judge could be found to hear this ridiculous case? Was he truly to face a criminal charge for letting Meg leave his land unattended to go and visit her husband? Was it even possible that such an arbitrary, irrational law existed in this nation founded on the principles of liberty and justice? She could not understand it, not at all.

She tried to think what someone like Verbena Ainsley might say. Something soothing. Something suited to the lady of a plantation. Above all, something dignified. "I shall do my best to act in your place, Mr. Bohannon," she said primly. "I hope I have your confidence."

"Course you do," he said, smiling unsteadily. Then his eyes widened and what color was left in his face drained away to a sickening grey. "The tobacco, Mary," he gasped, strangling on the syllables.

She nodded calmly. "Nate and Elijah will keep bringing in the tobacco," she promised. "You won't be gone long enough to worry."

He shook his head like a specter standing to warn the unsuspecting away from the gates of hell. "The fires!" he hissed. "I forgot about the fires!"

Mary's throat closed. The fires in the tobacco kiln: no one had been watching them. How long had they stood unattended? An hour? Two? If they burned out, that was not such a calamity: they could be set again quickly enough even now to avoid any harm to the batch. But if a stray spark flew up and ignited the dry leaves…

Elijah's head had jerked up at these words, though how he could hear Cullen's frantic whisper at five yards' distance Mary did not know. But he caught her eye, and she nodded to him, and with a speed and agility that should have been impossible for a man of his age he ran off past the house and out towards the rise. Mary tried to look after him, but the bulk of the building obscured the stretch of sky that would have shown smoke from an unwanted blaze. There was nothing she could do to reassure Cullen. She looked at him helplessly, and saw him struggling to hide his dread.

"That's enough love-talk," Brannan said impatiently. "You coming willingly, Bohannon, or do we got to come up there and fetch you?"

Cullen's eyes hardened to twin flints. "I'm coming," he said between gritted teeth. He leaned in as if to kiss Mary's left cheek – the one nearest the house. "Get word to me," he whispered hastily. "All right or not, get word to me: I'd sooner know."

"Yes," she breathed, her lips scarcely moving. Then he tore himself free of her eyes and stumped down the steps. He managed to walk lightly, his head upheld and his shoulders straight. As he drew near to Brannan the sheriff held up the manacles. The corners of Cullen's lips turned up in a smirk.

"That really necessary?" he asked.

"You attacked me," said Brannan equably. "What would you do in my place?"

Cullen held out his wrists and the sheriff slid on the shackles, locking each one and tugging it to ensure it was properly secured. Then he planted a firm hand above Cullen's elbow and led him towards the back of the Black Maria. Cullen halted at Napoleon's shoulder, staring up at Mr. Sutcliffe with cold loathing in his eyes.

Sutcliffe smiled sweetly. "I warned you not to threaten me with the law, Bohannon," he said silkily.

Cullen's body jerked so that the chain between his wrists sang, but he made no voluntary motion of threat. He walked on, letting Brannan shepherd him to the door in the cage. He looked back at Mary, trying to smile, but his face was suddenly stricken with dismay he could not hide.

Uncomprehending, Mary looked around, and she realized to her horror that she was no longer alone on the porch. Gabe, whom she had left with Lottie in the parlor, was once more at the threshold, watching in solemn silence as his father was led away in chains. "Pappy?" he said, his voice this time tremulous but still strong enough to carry across the yard and sting Cullen's heart.

Mary saw the lance of pain, and the awful burn of mortification. She remembered it from another miserable day, not so long ago, and she could hear his slurred and exhausted voice ringing in her ears. _Dammit, Mary, don't let 'im see me like this._ Then Cullen raked up a reassuring grin.

"It's all right, son," he called. "I'll be gone a couple of days: that's all. You mind your mama, you hear?"

"Yassir," Gabe called back. He shuffled forward and seized a handful of Mary's skirt. Her hand found his head and caressed it, but her eyes were fixed on Cullen.

As he stepped up into the carriage Brannan gave him a perfectly-timed shove so that he stumbled, barking his knee on the bench that ran below the level of the wagon box. He sat down hard, the chain rattling as he settled his hands in his lap. Brannan shut the door and latched it, then climbed up beside his deputy. He took the gun, and the other man picked up the reins. The strong horses drew the heavy vehicle in a tight circle to retreat down the drive. This brought the back of the Black Maria to face the house. Cullen was turned on the seat so that his wife and child could see his face, and he raised one shackled hand to wave, still smiling for his son.

But Gabe was old enough to know this was not right. Pappy wasn't riding off on Bonnie, who was standing by the fence where Elijah had left her. He wasn't driving the buggy or the buckboard. He was behind heavy black bars with his wrists fettered together, and a man on the box with a gun. "No!" Gabe shouted with all the might of his child's lungs. "No! No, Pappy!"

And before Mary could stop him he was careening down the steps, bare feet pounding on the drive and nightshirt-tails flapping as he ran after the unwieldy wagon. Cullen stiffened, straightening as if to get to his feet, and his mouth opened in a silent cry of protest, but he was helpless. Mary leapt off the veranda, gathering her skirts in her fist, and ran with all her might to catch her son. She managed to outpace him and swung her arm under both of his, hooking him across the chest. Bent awkwardly, her ribs heaving against her corsets, she quieted his panicked protests.

"Hush, dearest, hush," she gasped. "Pappy's all right. He's going to be fine. He's just going away for a few days. Just a few days."

Gabe settled at last, falling silent and slumping back against her knees, staring in the direction his father had gone. Mary disentangled herself and straightened, keeping a comforting hand on his shoulder. She couldn't stay here with her heart trotting off towards Meridian; she had to get back into the house and see how badly Meg was hurt. Nate had to be sent for the doctor at once. Yes, that was it. The doctor. He could look at Meg's back, and he could advise her. Doctor Whitehead would know what to do.

Mary started to turn back towards the house, and drew up suddenly. Mr. Sutcliffe was still sitting tall and cool upon his Thoroughbred, looking down upon her with condescending pity in his eyes.

"I'm truly sorry to have brought such disarray to your doorstep, Miss Mary," he drawled, his lips puckering as if he were tasting the sugar of his own words. "It was not my intention to cause _you_ any distress. If there is _anything_ I can do to comfort you in your time of trouble, you need only to say, my dear."

Mary wanted to fly at him and claw his eyes out, but she was far too conscious of her dignity, and of Cullen's. She would not behave like an Irish fishwife – or a Cracker, which she supposed from the way people spoke was the Mississippi equivalent. She would maintain her decorum. After all, she had been bred among the social elite of Manhattan, and she knew how to chill a man with the most cordial of words.

"Mr. Sutcliffe," she said, enunciating exquisitely; "I believe that you have done quite enough. Would you like me to call my man to escort you off the property?"


	39. Taken Away

**Chapter Thirty-Nine: Taken Away**

Gabe pressed his back against Mama's legs, arms straight at his sides and fists clamped upon handfuls of her skirts. He could feel how stiff and straight her knees were: she stood like a pillar behind him. Her fingers were just brushing his shoulders now, for she had straightened up to speak to the man on the horse. He was tall and he was old, and although he was smiling and he hadn't touched Pappy, Gabe didn't like him.

"That won't be necessary, Miss Mary," he said in a drawling, syrupy voice. "I know my way."

"Then please depart," Mama said. Her voice was cold enough to make Gabe shiver, and it confirmed his suspicion: the man in the gray suit was not a nice person. Mama didn't like him either.

"If that is your wish, ma'am, I certainly shall," the man said. His eyes widened a little as if in surprise. "Oh, I nearly forgot." He reached behind him and took a sack that had been slung over the back of the saddle. "Your property, I believe. The dress and shoes the Negress was wearing. You must forgive me for the… incidental damages. They were unavoidable."

Mama took the sack and clutched it, keeping her eyes fixed upon the man. They were very hard, and her face very proud. Gabe thought she was angry, and trying to hide it. He knew that _he_ was angry. Those bad men had shut his pappy up in a cage and taken him away! The gray-haired one had pushed him, too, and Gabe didn't understand why Pappy hadn't just pushed him back. At least Pappy hadn't seemed scared or upset when they took him, not like he had when he and the gray-haired man had been fighting with Meg between them. Gabe's eyes shifted anxiously towards the house. Meg was hurt. She was hurt and bloody. Those bad men had hurt her, and they had taken his pappy away, and Gabe was frightened.

"If you'd just hand me my whip, I'll be going," the man on the horse said cordially. He sounded very polite, but his eyes were not smiling. Gabe shrank back further into the shelter of his mother's skirts.

"Fetch it yourself," said Mama levelly. She did not move.

"You, son," said the man. Now he was looking at Gabe, and his smile was wider still. "Hand me that whip, there's a good boy."

He pointed at the black thing lying in the dirt of the drive. Gabe's gaze travelled to it. It looked like a great dark snake, coiled in the mud and waiting to strike. It didn't look like a whip to Gabe. His pappy had a whip that he sometimes put in a little cup on the buggy box. It was made of a willow wand, painted with shiny dark lacquer with a tassel on the end. It was mostly for show, though sometimes Pappy would use it to tickle Bonnie's ears so that she tossed her head proudly. There was no use in trying the same thing with Pike: it only made him sneeze. But Pike and Bonnie knew their business, and usually didn't need any guidance from a whip at all.

"Just pick it up and hand it to me," the tall man coaxed. "Go on."

Mama's hold on Gabe's shoulder tightened, and he knew she didn't want him to do it. Pappy had said that Gabe must mind Mama: he had said nothing about strange men on horseback.

"No!" Gabe said stoutly, stomping one bare foot. The hem of his nightshirt danced. "Fetch it youself! Go 'way! Get!"

The man made a choking noise and his face flushed dark. He straightened in the saddle and gathered the reins so tightly that the horse lifted one front hoof in protest. The man's eyes narrowed and he shot a look of fury at Mama. "Delightful," he said chillingly. "Like father, like son, I see." He wafted his free hand disdainfully at the black thing. "Keep it. A gift for your husband, Miss Mary."

Then he turned the horse and dug in his spurs and galloped off towards the road. Mama did not watch him go. She stood very straight and still, holding fast to Gabe's shoulder, until the man was gone. Then her shoulders slumped and she crouched down, gathering Gabe into her arms and hugging him close. She was trembling.

"Mama?" Gabe said, his voice very small and uncertain. "Mama, why dey take Pappy away?"

She pressed her cheek to the side of his head and sighed. "Oh, dearest, he'll be all right," she murmured. Then before Gabe could ask about Meg Mama lifted him onto her hip, tugging his nightshirt snug to keep his bottom covered. Balancing the sack in the crook of her other arm, she hurried up the steps and into the house.

"What 'bout dat whip?" Gabe asked. "Ain't it a present for Pappy?"

"No, Gabe. No, it's not," Mama said. Her voice cracked and she held him still tighter. "Mr. Sutcliffe is only trying to make Pappy angry, and we mustn't let him do it. He's been quite successful enough already."

Gabe tucked his head against Mama's shoulder and coughed. There was a tickle in his throat today. Mama jiggled him, but she could not pat his back with the sack under her arm. She turned into the dining room and let it fall onto the table, then set Gabe down on Pappy's chair. Gabe stood, holding onto the outer spindle of the back.

"Stay in here," Mama said. Her eyes were shifting distractedly between Gabe and the kitchen door, which stood ajar. Mama hastily caressed the back of his head and kissed his brow. "That's my brave boy."

She slipped into the kitchen, and Gabe watched her go. He coughed again, just a little cough, and gnawed on his lower lip. There were frightening sounds coming from the kitchen. Someone was crying, and trying very hard not to. Bethel was murmuring so softly that Gabe could not hear the words. And there was another noise, too; a low, moaning, snuffling, gasping noise that crescendoed as he listened to a sharp little cry.

Gabe shrank down on the chair, lowering his bottom to his heels and then letting his feet creep out towards the edge of the seat. Mama was speaking now, her voice gentle but quavering a little with worry.

"Is it very bad?" she asked. "Oh, Meg…"

"It bad," said Bethel. "Not the wors' I's seen, but bad. Chile ain't never been beat her whole life; allus been a good woman. Why they go an' whup her fo' visitin' her Peter?"

The weeping grew louder and Mama's skirts swished. Then a rough, unsteady voice that Gabe didn't recognize at once spoke up out of another harsh gasp. "Missus M-Mary, I didn'. I didn' mean to do it…"

Again the rush of skirts, and the table creaked. "Hush. Hush, Meg; you did nothing wrong. It isn't your fault. That hateful man. He had no right to beat you, and I don't care what the sheriff said."

"The sheriff?" Bethel said sharply. "What the sheriff have to do with all this?"

"He brought her back," Mama said. "They tried to claim she was a runaway. Where's Nate?"

"Gone to fetch water," said Bethel. "I thought it bes'—" There was hiss of agony, and the old lady said soothingly; "There, honey. There. You try an' breathe, now. Jus' you breathe."

Gabe could not sit where he was any longer. He slid onto the floor, his toes landing soundlessly, and moved nearer the door. Mama had said he was to stay in the dining room, and he had to mind her, but he could at least draw a little nearer. He did not want to be out here all alone. Mama and Bethel were just in the next room, and he would feel safer if he could be close to them.

"She ain't no runaway," Bethel said, her voice now almost plaintive. "Twelve year she been goin' there to visit her Peter: back ev'y time by sundown. What Mist' Sutcliffe go an' do it for?"

"He said she needed a paper, written permission," Mama said distractedly. "She's never needed it before. Cullen… I've never seen him so angry."

"I's angry my own self," Bethel growled. "Ain't reasonable. Ain't human. Here now, Meg honey, you jus' hol' on. This one goin' sting."

The hollow strangled shriek that followed sent a jolt of terror through Gabe's entire body. He wanted to run away and hide, but he could not move. From the other side of the wall there came a frightened whimper, and Mama's skirts swished again. "Lottie, wouldn't you rather go and sit in the parlor?" Mama asked. "You don't need to watch this."

"No'm. No," Lottie choked out, trying to swallow her sobs. Gabe's innards twisted. He had never heard Lottie cry. "I's goin' stay right here. She my ma. I's goin' stay with her."

"You go on an' do what Missus Mary say," said Bethel. "Your ma got her 'nough worries without you watchin' this."

Lottie's voice quavered. "B-but…"

"Please," gasped Meg thinly. "P-p-please go…"

"Go and sit in the parlor," Mama said consolingly. "You might even lie down on the couch and have a rest. It's been such an awful morning."

Gabe sprang back just in time as the door swung open and Lottie came out of the kitchen. Her face was wet with tears, and she had an old cotton handkerchief balled up in one hand. Her nose was running and her eyes were red. For a moment she didn't seem to see him, standing just out of sight of the gap in the door. Then she was down on her knees, drawing him further into the shelter of the dividing wall.

"Hush," she whispered. "I ain't goin' nowheres neither."

"Why Meg hurt?" Gabe asked, keeping his own voice as low as he could. In the kitchen, Bethel was giving Mama instructions. The sound of pouring water followed, and the stove-lid rattled. "Why dem bad men hurt Meg?"

Lottie's whole body shuddered and she shook her head convulsively. "I don' know." She sounded like she was going to burst into tears again. She drew Gabe down into her lap and rested her chin on his shoulder, hugging him tightly and rocking back and forth. "I don' know."

There was a sound of boots and the back door rattled. Something heavy was set down on the floor. "Col' water."

The deep voice belonged to Nate. Gabe heard the clink of a dipper against a tin cup, and the footsteps moved towards the table. "Meg?" Nate's voice wavered uncertainly. "Nice cool water, jus' up from the well."

"Drink, honey," Bethel coaxed in just the tone of voice she used with Gabe when he was sick. "It goin' help that sore head."

Meg's ragged, creaking voice lifted a little in surprise. "How you know I gots a sore head?" she panted.

"That come with a whuppin'," Bethel said gently. "Ev'y one I's ever see'd, when it over they gots a sore head." She hesitated, and then asked, in an uncharacteristically humble voice; "Missus Mary, you think mebbe we could dose her? I know them powders is for the white folks, but this here chile in pain."

"Of course we could!" Mama exclaimed, sounding almost eager to be able to help at last. "I'm ashamed I didn't think of it myself." The dish-dresser rattled. "How much do I give her?"

"Jus' 'nough to cover the bottom of a spoon," said Bethel. "Then a dollop of sorghum t'make it go down easier."

Meg breathed sharply again, and Lottie's body jerked beneath Gabe. It was as if her mother's every pain was echoed in her body. She hugged him tighter still; almost too tight, truth be told, but Gabe did not protest. If it made Lottie feel better to squeeze him, he could be a little man and bear it. She was frightened and she was hurting. If his mama were the one all bloodied and torn, Gabe knew he would be frightened and hurting, too. Angrily he thought that if it had been _his_ mama, maybe he would have just kept quiet and let Pappy hit the bad gray-haired man like he had wanted to!

Through the gaping door came a cough and a shallow wheeze, and the tin cup rattled against Meg's teeth as someone held it for her to drink. "There. I know it taste like poison," said Bethel; "but you's goin' feel the good of it."

Mama drew in a deep breath, and Gabe could imagine her straightening her back and smoothing her skirts. "Nate," she said in a calm voice that comforted Gabe tremendously; "I need you to run out to the tobacco barn and make sure that Elijah is all right."

"Lord ha' mercy, the fires!" Nate cried, and in Gabe's ear Lottie gasped in horror. "We plumb forgot them fires!"

"Yes," said Mary. "Please go and see that everything is all right. It must be, surely, or he would have come for help. Mustn't it?"

"I wouldn' count on that," Bethel said darkly. "He know we gots trouble here. Ain't Mist' Cullen gone to he'p him?"

There was an awful silence, and Gabe felt his arms and legs begin to shake. Bethel didn't know. She didn't know they had taken Pappy away. She had been inside the whole time, first looking to breakfast and then taking care of Meg. She didn't know: nobody knew but him and Mama.

Mama was trying very hard to keep her voice steady: Gabe could hear the strain in it. But still it quaked and quailed. "Cullen is gone," she said. "They took him. He's been placed under arrest for allowing a slave to go at large without legitimate business. The sheriff wanted to take you, Meg, but Cullen wouldn't let him. He… they took him."

"Took him?" cried Bethel. The note of panic in her voice was worse than anything else Gabe had heard today. Bethel was always so strong, so calm and collected and brave. Now she sounded wild with fright. "Where they took him? Why?"

"Th-the county jail in Meridian, I presume," Mama said unsteadily. "He'll be brought before a Justice of the Peace, and Meg will have to appear as well. I… I offered a surety, but the sheriff refused. Nor would he take Cullen's word. I think… I think that's the worst of it for him. That, and not knowing what's going on at home. Nate." Her voice hardened again into one of level command. "Run and see that all is well with Elijah. Then I need you to ride at once for Doctor Whitehead. Tell him that Meg is sorely wounded, and that Cullen is in trouble. Tell him he must come at once. Tell him…"

Her voice trailed off, and Nate spoke. "Ain't no white doctor goin' come look at a nigger, Missus," he said. "Mos'ly niggers jus' ten' to themselves, or the missus do what she think bes' for 'em."

"I don't know what to do for a flogging!" Mama cried, suddenly shrill. Then she inhaled slowly and said, more serenely; "I'm the mistress, Nate, and what I think best is for Meg to have a doctor. Doctor Whitehead _will_ come; I'm sure of it. Tell him that Mr. Bohannon is in trouble and we need him at once. Tell him we need – I need – his help."

"I's to saddle up one of the mules?" asked Nate.

"No. Take Bonnie," Mama said. "Surely you can ride Bonnie?" There was just enough of a pause for a nod or a shake of the head. It must have been a nod, thought Gabe, for Mama went on; "She's tethered to the fence, and she's ready to ride. She's much swifter than a mule: she'll get you there quicker. Go as fast as you safely can. And… you must somehow find the means to get word to Cullen that the tobacco is fine and that we're taking care of Meg. I don't know how you'll go about it… perhaps the doctor will know?"

"We doesn' know the tobacco fine, Missus Mary," Bethel warned.

"It is fine. It must be," said Mama. She sounded breathless. "A fire now… I think a fire would break us."

"Missus, I can' take that horse," Nate said. His voice was very low, and very grave. "Folks see me on Mist' Cullen's prize horse, they goin' think I stoled it an' ran. What to stop them haulin' me back same as Mist' Sutcliffe did Meg? Who goin' fetch the doctor then?"

"I'll write you a pass," Mama declared, suddenly vehement. "The sheriff said that Cullen ought to have given Meg a pass and sent her on lawful business. Fetching the doctor is lawful business, and so if I give you a note explaining that you have my leave to be off our land with the horse… yes, yes, that's just what I'll do."

Before either Gabe or Lottie could move, the kitchen door was flung wide and Mama hurried past them, so near that her skirt brushed against Lottie's arm. But she was intent upon her mission and took no notice of the two children huddled together on the floor. She disappeared into the hallway, and Gabe heard the distant squeak of the secretary front as Mama opened it. Pappy was always saying that the hinges needed a spot of oil, but somehow he never got 'round to doing it. He couldn't do it now, either, thought Gabe anxiously, because those men in the frightening black cage-wagon had taken him away to somewhere called the countingjail.

Lottie had stiffened against him again, and she was hugging him more tightly than ever. Gabe could hardly even breathe deeply, she was holding him so close. Her chin was up off his shoulder now, and her head raised like a hound perking to the scent of a jackrabbit. She was looking through the kitchen door, now open wide. Gabe twisted, following her gaze, and he stared.

Meg was on the bench, her bare legs curled beneath it and her body bowed low over the table. One arm was curled up against her, hugging a stained work-shirt to her front. The other was stretched out, fingers clawing at the bone-smooth wood of the table as if she could transfer her pain into the piece of furniture if only she pressed hard enough. Her eyes were closed, hot tears squeezing from the corners, and the muscles of her face were knotted in torment. Her cheeks, ordinarily round and kindly-looking, seemed hollow and tense with suffering. Her eyes were sunken in, with great circles beneath them so black that they were startling even against the deep brown of her skin. Her headcloth was gone, and her hair was wild and tangled with blood. Her lips were swollen and purpled, and there was blood on her teeth where she had bitten them. Her back, curled into a tortured hump, was a mass of deep cuts and wheals and dark, bloody pits. Bethel was dabbing at the lowest of these with a rag stained carmine with blood.

Meg was almost naked, too: her shift was torn right up the back, and it hung loose to show her ribs as they strained to draw breath against the pain. The shirt she was holding didn't really cover her breasts, not from the side. And with the bench rucking up the bloodstained hem of the shift her legs looked so long and bare. Gabe had never seen a lady's bare legs before; he knew that wasn't right.

Neither Bethel nor Meg had noticed the children, but Nate had. He was standing by the door, and his eyes had found them. Gabe couldn't tell what he was thinking. He had taken off his shirt so that Meg could cover herself, and the thick, ropey muscles of his chest and stomach stood stark beneath his skin. He was very stiff and tense, but he did not look angry and Gabe was glad. He thought Nate looked sad, so terribly, awfully sad that he could not really feel anything at all.

Bethel looked up from her ministrations and frowned at him. "You get 'long to that barn!" she said. "If they's trouble, Elijah goin' need you. Missus Mary can give you that pass when you comes back fo' the horse. Git!"

"Yas'm," said Nate. His finger twitched towards Gabe and Lottie. "But you's got—"

"Go on: git!" Bethel scolded. She sounded stern, but Gabe thought she was only trying not to be frightened. Nate seemed to understand this, too, for he did not argue further. He nodded and stepped out through the back door, and for a brief moment Gabe could see him trotting off in the direction of the kiln.

Left alone now with Meg, or so she thought, Bethel set down the cloth in the basin of bloody water and crouched beside the younger woman. She reached up to brush matted curls from the slick, clammy forehead, as gently as she would have done for Gabe. He was glad that Meg had Bethel to care for her: Bethel was the very best person to have with you when you were sick or hurting or scared. The strong, slender dark hand cupped Meg's cheek and turned her head gently so that Bethel could look her in the eyes.

"You tell me now, honey," Bethel said. Her voice was firm but very low, so that Gabe could only just make out the words. "Did that old man touch you?"

Meg's face contorted into a mask of shame and she made a tiny whimpering sound deep in her throat. "Beat me hisself, he did," she confessed miserably. "Said his overseer like to be too gentle. Said he goin' teach the nigger b-b-bitch fo' trespassin'."

"Honey, you know that ain't what I mean," said Bethel. Now she sounded stern, almost angry. "Did he do wrong by you? Did he take what no man, white nor black, got a right to take?"

Meg shook her head spastically, opening up one of the lacerations across the base of her neck. It began to bleed again, but neither woman seemed to notice. "He made 'em strip me," she choked out. "S-strung me up, an' he loo-ooked. He put his han'…" She gestured with her curled arm, fingers cupped and shifting towards her right breast. The shirt slithered from her grasp and puddled on her lap. "An' he s-squeezed. Said… said… bu' then he took the whip…"

She sobbed wretchedly and buried her face against her arm, drawing in the other to clutch at the back of her head. Her back shook and shuddered, and bright new pinions of blood showed.

"Shh-shh," Bethel crooned. Carefully, so very carefully she rose up and drew Meg to her, caressing her head and hugging her shoulder, but careful not to touch even one of the terrible wounds. She kissed the crown of Meg's head and swayed a little to rock her. "Shh, honey. You's safe now. He can' touch you here. Missus Mary ain' goin' let no one hurt you no more."

"But Mist' Cullen… M-Mist' Cullen been took!" wailed Meg. Her hand clutched at Bethel's apron. "It my fault he gone… what he goin' say to me? What he goin' do?"

"He goin' do what's right," Bethel said fiercely. "That one think you can 'pend upon. Mist' Cullen goin' do what's right."

"What do you think, Bethel?" Mama came hurrying into the dining room, a piece of the good writing paper held carefully in both hands. The ink was still glistening wet. "_Know all who read this that the bearer, one Nate by name, has been sent forth on lawful business in Meridian at my behest and with my leave. He has been entrusted with the Morgan mare Bonnie, to speed his journey and facilitate his swift return with Doctor Whitehead. I pray, do not delay my servant on this urgent erran— _Gabe!"

The two children tore their eyes at last from the tableau of suffering before them and looked up at the lady. Mama's face was very white, and her eyes sharp with dismay. Hastily she set the letter on the corner of the table, and bent to gather Gabe out of Lottie's arms. She hoisted him onto her hip and then cupped her hand under the girl's elbow and drew her to her feet as well. "Come along," she said hoarsely. "Neither of you should be watching this. Come. Gabe, you can play in the nursery while Mama helps Bethel. Lottie, you must stay with him. I know that you want to be with your mother, but until she's been properly cared for it really will be easier for her if you're not at hand. Come, darling: I know you want to be with her, but it isn't right."

And Mama whisked them out of the dining room and up the stairs, but not before Gabe cast one last anxious look over her shoulder at Meg, bare and bleeding and tortured, in Bethel's strong arms. He coughed quietly into Mama's hair. He wished those men hadm't taken his pappy away.

_*discidium*_

The cuffs were too tight. The shackles were made to keep a woman's hands from slipping through them, and they pinched Cullen's wrists. It was ridiculous that such a small irritant should be foremost in his mind at a time like this, but it was. He supposed that was because all the rest of it was too much for him to cope with just at present. Brave, dignified Meg made feral and wretched by pain; Sutcliffe tall and patrician and sneering atop his proud horse; Mary, witnessing the entire awful spectacle; and Gabe…

That was worst of all. Bad enough for his son to catch him so irrational with rage that he had actually come within a breath of striking a sheriff. But for Gabe to see him arrested, hauled away in chains like some kind of criminal – that was unbearable. Would he understand, would Mary be able to make him understand that his pappy wasn't wicked; that he was guilty of nothing but ignorance of the law? He had not known that he needed to send Meg with written permission to visit Peter. It had never even occurred to him. His father and Abel Sutcliffe had come to a mutual accord on the matter, as planters were wont to do in such situations, and Cullen had simply been fool enough to think the arrangement could continue. He had never really expected Sutcliffe to make trouble for Meg just to get at him, but he realized now that he should have.

Meg was simply too easy a target: vulnerable under the law, powerless to protect herself. Sutcliffe could strike against her without anything to fear either from the sheriff or from public opinion. As much as Cullen wished to believe otherwise, he knew that he would never be able to make their peers see that Sutcliffe had done wrong. Maintaining order among the darkies was simply too important to the Southern way of life: no one would condemn a man for whipping a Negro he believed (or professed to believe) to be off her master's land without permission. Maybe, just maybe Cullen might be able to explain the truth to Boyd Ainsley, but no one else would even try to see his side of the matter.

There was going to be a scandal over this, too, he thought as the Black Maria swayed drunkenly down the hill towards the edge of town. The law regarding slaves going at large permitted the taking of the slave in question as a guarantee of the master's appearance in court out of courtesy to the slaveholder. The provision allowed a man to put up human collateral for the charge laid against him, and so to continue on with his everyday business with a minimum of inconvenience. The law was intended to let a slave be taken in her master's place, not to allow a master to take the place of his slave.

When word spread that Cullen Bohannon had done precisely that, the county would be abuzz. He had raised eyebrows before, with his rakish youth and his Northern marriage, with his disregard for stolid convention and with the affront of actually working his own land, but all of those things the Mississippi mind could stretch itself to understand. Boys would run wild, especially boys without a mother's gentling hand. The heart did not always make allowance for the state in which a woman was born. Every community had _someone_ who questioned the way that things had always been done. And if a man had a choice between laboring in the tobacco or seeing his child go hungry, there was no choice at all. But to let himself be placed under arrest when the law and the sheriff would have been satisfied with a field hand… that was inexplicable. Alien. It smacked of abolitionist sentiment, and in these times that was very dangerous.

It was what Sutcliffe had intended, of course. The stark simplicity of the man's plan forced Cullen to admit a grudging respect for his intellect. First he had ensured that Meg was injured grievously enough to rouse Cullen's rage and pity in equal and substantive measure. He couldn't have done that under the provision that allowed a man to take ten lashes off a trespassing slave: he had to plant the notion of a runaway in Brannan's head so that he would beat her too. Ten lashes last evening, Cullen thought, and a night in terror and pain to reduce Meg to little more than an animal, and then the sheriff's flogging in the morning so that she was freshly bloodied and ready to make a spectacle. Then to threaten Cullen with the ghastly prospect of having to whip one of his own people, for the law required a man to chastise his runaways; Sutcliffe knew, of course, that Cullen would deny she had run and would declare, truthfully, that he had allowed her to go. From there it was but a short step to confessing explicitly, at Brannan's insistent prompting, that he had sent her off willingly, knowingly at large, and was therefore guilty under the law. And Sutcliffe must surely have known that Cullen would not allow Meg to be taken in such a state; could not, in fact, have allowed her to be taken at all for his folly and his mistake and his crime. So here he was, a pair of slave manacles digging into his flesh, about to be hauled through the streets of Meridian in a cage.

For a fleeting moment Cullen considered sliding down off the bench to crouch on the floor. It was an unworthy impulse, and he quashed it. It would be humiliating to be seen like this, but it would be much more shameful to try to hide. He lifted his foot, bracing his boot against the opposite bench, and affected an indolent posture with his shoulder against the bars. His fingers stretched of their own accord, trying to relieve the pressure that was starting to give them a purplish cast. The movement caused the chain to rustle, and he forced himself to be still. Forced his expression to remain impassive as the first pair of curious eyes turned towards the spectacle of a prisoner being hauled into town. Forced his head to remain high when someone at the edge of Main Street called his name.

The jailhouse was on the far side of the tracks: a two-storey stone structure with bars on the lower windows and muslin curtains fluttering from the upper ones. Deputy Sheriff Dayton kept the jail: he and his family lived above. The driver pulled the prison wagon to a halt before the stout oak doors, and he and the sheriff climbed down and came around to the back of the vehicle. The deputy held the rifle while Brannan opened the door.

"Are you going to come peaceably, Mr. Bohannon," he asked, far more loudly than necessary; "or do we need to come in there and drag you out?"

"I'll come peaceably," Cullen said calmly. He put down his boot and stood, forced to stoop by the low roof of the cage. He stepped down onto the street, his balance upset as the sheriff seized his forearm. He stumbled but kept his expression neutral and bit down the urge to struggle. It wouldn't do anyone any good, least of all him.

A small curious throng had gathered, but the one sidelong glance he spared them showed Cullen no familiar faces. Of course that did not mean he hadn't been recognized: recent financial troubles notwithstanding, he came from one of the old and wealthy families on whose prosperity Lauderdale County had been built. As his Scots ancestors had known their overlords, the small farmers and trappers and tradesmen of Meridian knew the planters.

A laughing voice, half-jeering and half-amiable, confirmed his suspicion. "What's this, Sheriff? Against the law to marry a Yankee now, is it?"

Cullen attempted a good-natured grin, but wound up merely baring his teeth thinly as he was led up the steps and into the narrow, stuffy corridor that cut the jail in two. The deputy dragged the door closed, shutting out the inquisitive onlookers, and Cullen was tugged sideways into an office with two windows looking out on the street. Deputy Joseph Dayton was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk. He sat up hurriedly as his boss entered, the chair legs crashing down onto the floor. He was thirty and balding already, and as he recognized the prisoner his face broke into a good-natured but lopsided smile that kept his lips clamped tightly on his pipe.

"Cullen!" he exclaimed. "What're you doing here? Your past crimes caught up to you at last? I always said you had the luck of Lucifer, but maybe I'm wrong."

"Seems you are," said Brannan coolly. "Mr. Bohannon here has been arrested for permitting one of his slaves to wander at large. He'll be a guest of the county until a judge can sort it out."

Joe frowned. He and Cullen had been at school together for five years, before Joe had been obliged to leave formal education to learn his father's cabinetry trade. Cullen, older and in any case a natural ringleader, had been very much admired by Joe in those days. "Hell, Sheriff, why'nt you just bring the slave?"

"She weren't in no fit state," Cullen said before Brannan could answer. "I need her healed up quick so she can get back to work: all hands needed at harvest time."

Joe, who had never owned a slave, nodded at this. "They can spare the master easier, I guess," he said. He dipped his pen and made an untidy scrawl in the booking ledger. Cullen supposed it was meant to be his name. "What about bail?"

"Set it at fifty dollars," said the Sheriff with a note of vengeful delight. "Maximum allowable fine for the offence."

Joe noted this, and chuckled. "I guess you'll be out by the end of the day, hey, Cullen?"

Apparently he had not heard the all-too-accurate rumors about the Bohannon finances hovering on the brink of bankruptcy. "I wouldn't count on that, Joe," Cullen said. "Can't spare fifty dollars any more than I can spare my woman."

"You might have to," Brannan said gleefully. He did not take his predatory eyes off of Cullen as he asked; "Dayton, who's got this week's session?"

"Justice White," said Joe. "Should be an easy day: he always hurries things along so we can all be home for supper."

Cullen's spirits rose just a little. George White had quietly stepped up into his father's seat as a Justice of the Peace three years ago. If he was hearing the case, Cullen had a chance for justice: their personal amiability aside, George took his duties very seriously and would be unlikely to be swayed by prejudice. Or bribes.

"Hmph." Brannan tugged at his whiskers. "It'll have to be next week, then. Put him on Justice Graham's docket."

"I got a right to a speedy trial," Cullen said.

"It ain't a trial: just a hearing to fix your fine," Brannan said. "And if eight days ain't speedy enough for you, you can write to the President and complain!"

Cullen's wrath rose and he turned to square off against the older man. "So I got to sit here eight days instead of one so that you can put me up in front of a judge who's friendly with Abel Sutcliffe?" he hissed.

Brannan laughed and clapped his shoulder with such force that it was almost painful. "Watch yourself, Bohannon: that's some skinny ice right there. 'Sides, it's only four days extra: White's got the Friday session. Give you time to make arrangements for counsel, if you want to go and stand on your rights."

The other deputy sniggered. "Counsel for a misdemeanor?" he said. "That dog don't hunt."

"Oh, but Mr. Bohannon has a _right_ to counsel," the sheriff declared. "Ain't that so, son? Course, I don't see the county approvin' to pay for it. Maybe you can find a lawyer will take ratty tobacco in trade?"

Chortling to himself he strode from the room, leaving Cullen alone with the two deputies. Joe was watching him warily. "You got any money or valuables you want to leave in my charge?" he asked.

Cullen almost let out a bark of sardonic laughter at this, but managed to rein it in before it came out as more than a snort. "None," he said. "I left the house unexpectedly."

"Why'd you let your nigger wander off?" asked Joe.

The angry tirade he was longing to inflict on someone almost choked him, but Cullen kept it back. Joe was just doing his job, and the man with the rifle would quite likely be happy to club him with it if he waxed belligerent. He shook his head instead and said; "It was a misunderstanding."

"Sheriff whipped her, huh? Took her for a runaway?" Joe asked. "Must be bad, if you'd sooner sit in jail than have her in here. My Sarah's a good nurse, you know, if you want to change your mind."

"No." Cullen's teeth were set, and he wished that Joe would stop trying to be so damned considerate. He needed to get this over with before his temper got the best of him.

"Awright. You got any sicknesses; cough, cold, dysentery, the like?" asked Joe.

"No."

"Any lice? Flees? Worms?"

"No."

"You want board?" Joe asked after he had noted these answers.

"How much is that?" said Cullen warily.

"Two bits a day, payable upon release," said Joe.

Two dollars, Cullen thought grimly. Two dollars to keep him fed for the eight days awaiting trial, on top of whatever penalty Mr. Graham decided to mete out in court. That it could not apparently be more than fifty did not comfort him much: fifty dollars was quite beyond his reach. He screwed his eyes closed and tried to focus only on the immediate worry. Two dollars for board at the jail, or two dollars to have the doctor look at Meg.

"No thanks," he said.

Joe nodded. "Visitors can come in between noon and two," he said. "Any food or other comforts they bring are subject to inspection: I usually do that. They ain't allowed to bring you spirits or matches, but chewing tobacco's fine and if you ask nice one of the kids'll fetch you a light for your pipe. And no pitch gum. The womenfolks have to scrape down the cells again, they're liable to lynch me."

"Understood," Cullen said. It sounded fair enough, except of course that he could hardly expect anyone to come into town just to bring him food. He wouldn't want them to. They'd have their hands full just running the plantation in his absence. It might be days or even weeks before Meg was well enough to work: how long did a whipping like that take to heal? Cullen knew that some of his neighbors put their darkies back in the fields the day after, but surely not after such a savage flogging as Meg had suffered.

"That's that, then," said Joe. "Get him out of them chains, Mark, so he can take his coat off."

Cullen frowned. "Take my coat off?"

"Sure," said Joe. "Waistcoat, too. You want 'em fresh for court, don't you? I'll keep 'em safe here. Even get Sarah to brush 'em down for you, as a favor between friends. Come on, Mark: ain't got all day."

The other deputy reluctantly propped the rifle against the wall and dug out the key to Cullen's cuffs. The manacles sprang open with the force of the compressed flesh beneath them, and almost instantly Cullen's hands were afire with the tingling of returning sensation. Hot blood flooded back up his arms, and the cold creep of fresh stuff trickled into his fingers. Instinctively he reached to rub his right wrist where the iron had bit deepest. Then he realized the two men were watching him: Mark disdainful and Joe concerned, and he forced his hands down to his sides.

"Your coat," Joe reminded him.

Cursing silently, Cullen fumbled with the buttons that Mary had fastened so deftly. His fingers were numb and clumsy, and it took him far too long to undo coat and vest. He shucked them hurriedly and handed them to Joe, who smoothed them and hung them on the last of a row of pegs, many of which held similar garments in varying degrees of disrepair. Cullen's well-worn second-best frock coat looked positively pristine in comparison to its ragged neighbor. Men of his class, impoverished or not, were not frequent patrons of the county jail.

Joe led him out into the corridor, which intersected with another running the breadth of the building. They passed the two secure cells with their stout wooden doors. These were used to isolate violent prisoners or to hold those guilty of the most serious crimes: treason, sedition, murder, rape of a white woman. Next came a general cell with bars all across its front. Inside, curled on the bare shelf bolted to the wall, was a thin woman wearing two ragged dresses layered atop each other. The stink of gin was strong on the air.

"All right there, Madge?" asked Joe.

"When you goin' let me get?" she whined. "I gots chil'ren to see to!"

"Your big girl's a better mother'n you'll ever be," Joe said good-naturedly. "Just you sober up, an' I'll let you go. Poor thing," he added to Cullen as he moved on. "Can't hold her liquor, can't keep from trying. Got six little ones at home: the oldest ain't but thirteen. Farms three acres up your way, or used to. Gov'ment will take it for taxes next year."

"No husband?" asked Cullen.

"Hanged him last spring," said Joe. "Horse-thief. Nag he stole weren't good for nothin' but the glue-pot, but he stole it just the same. This here's you."

He halted before a cell identical to the last, save that instead of a single occupant there were six men sprawled about a space not much bigger than Bethel's little room. One lay flat on his back on the shelf. One was curled up under it. Another occupied the far corner, knees up and head down. A boy, hardly more than fifteen, was lying on his stomach on the stone floor, drawing in the grime with his index finger. Another, barely conscious, was slumped against the bars near the bucket and dipper of drinking water. He too reeked of drink. The sixth was relieving himself into the befouled pail provided for such a purpose. They were all white, of course. The Negro cells were down the other end of the corridor.

Cullen tried to keep his disgust and discomfiture from showing, but he could not quite help shooting a questioning glance at the deputy. Joe shrugged helplessly. "Them's the ones awaitin' their turn in court," he said. "I got to put you in there with 'em: Sheriff knows we're friendly. Can't afford to show no favorites."

"Of course not," Cullen said. Joe took a ring of keys from his gun belt and found the appropriate one. He unlocked the door and motioned for Cullen to step in. Reluctant but resigned he did so, his nostrils tightening against the stench of his cellmates.

"Hey, Sheriff! Where's our dinner?" the man under the cot demanded.

"Ain't even eleven o'clock yet, Edwards," said Joe cheerfully. "And I ain't the sheriff. You'll get your dinner at one, same as always."

The man muttered some unintelligible profanity and Joe closed the door. He did not let it slam or rattle, sparing Cullen the awful finality of that sound. "You need anything, just shout," he said. "Somebody'll hear you."

Then with a reassuring grin he walked away. Unable to help himself, Cullen stepped forward, gripping the bars and trying to look after him. It was useless, of course: all he could see was a sliver of the hallway and the two men occupying the opposite cell. Both were sleeping, spooned together to fit on the single narrow bed. Both had overgrown beards and the gaunt, pasty look of long-time prisoners. Waiting to be hanged, he thought, and a chill ran up his spine. At least he was lucky not to have that waiting for him. Sutcliffe would have tried it if he could have.


	40. The Perfect Snare

**Chapter Forty: The Perfect Snare**

Meg was resting quietly. She wasn't asleep – Bethel didn't know how the poor child would be able to sleep, the pain she was in – but the anodyne powder had taken effect and she was peaceful now. It had taken the combined efforts of the two women to get Meg from the kitchen to Bethel's bedroom, for the strength had gone clear out of her legs and she could not help them. Missus Mary had cut away the tattered shift and they had put her to bed naked, covering her legs and buttocks with a quilt but leaving her riven back exposed. Bethel had bathed the wounds as best she could with tepid water, wiping away dirt and gore and bits of moldy hay, but she was afraid to do anything more. In the old days when Miss Caroline's family had spent summers on the plantation away from the unhealthy stews of summertime Charleston, Bethel had witnessed her share of whippings. The overseers had always chosen some unfortunate slave for the task of rubbing down the victim's wounds with brine: salt mixed with water 'til it was thick as porridge. They claimed it helped the wounds heal faster and kept infection at bay, and Bethel didn't know about that. What she did know was that slaves so used had always shrieked louder at this treatment than at the flogging itself. She didn't have the strength to inflict such anguish on Meg: she would wait and see what the doctor said.

Nate had been gone nearly an hour already: he would be coming into Meridian just about now. After Missus Mary had taken the children upstairs, Bethel had washed the blood from Meg's face and given her a cold compress for her swollen lip. She had split it right in two, biting down against the screams. Poor brave Meg: she had tried not to let that man know how he had hurt her. Her wrists were bruised and blackened where her weight had been hurled upon the shackles. Her toenails were ragged from trying to keep a grip on a packed-dirt floor.

There was still blood in her hair, tangled in the long, wiry curls that were usually so neatly hidden by her headcloth. When she was strong enough Bethel would offer to wash her hair for her. It would be some time before she would be able to lift her arms so high without pain. Now Bethel gathered the tumbling tresses and twisted them around her hand, making a loose knot which she laid upon the pillow where the flyaway strands could not catch upon the raw wounds. With the back of one finger she stroked Meg's cheek.

The younger woman moaned softly, her tongue flicking against her lips. Her eyelids fluttered and she looked up at Bethel. Because she did not move her head from the pillow, this motion exposed a large expanse of the white of her eyes, and Bethel swallowed a gasp of consternation. There was a lurid carmine blotch beside her left iris, like blood caught beneath the film of her eye. Hastily she schooled her features and tried to smile comfortingly.

"Jus' you rest, honey," she said. "Doctor goin' be here in 'nother hour or so, can Nate fin' him quickly. Jus' rest."

They had coaxed her to eat a little: the abandoned breakfast hominy liberally mixed with warm cream and a spoonful of the precious last of the store sugar. Food to comfort an empty stomach and put a little strength back in her. She hadn't had anything to eat since Sunday dinnertime, just before she went to see her husband.

"Peter," Meg whispered hoarsely. "What Mist' Sutcliffe goin' do with Peter?"

"I don' know, honey," said Bethel. "Why you think he goin' do anything?" She knew why, of course: the pretext had been that Meg was a runaway, making Peter thereby guilty of sheltering her. The charge would not hold up under law, thanks to Mister Cullen's firm insistence that Meg had not run. But the punishment a man might mete out on his own slave for involvement in such an incident was another matter entirely.

"Try to stop 'em. Mist' Gibbs an' t'other overseer. He try to stop 'em takin' me." Meg's eyes fluttered closed, hiding that horrible red smear. Her ravaged body shuddered. "They took him 'way. They's goin' whup him, too."

Bethel could think of no comfort to offer. It seemed very likely that Peter would be beaten, and badly, if Meg's hurts were any measure. Bethel hadn't tried to count the lashes. She didn't want to.

"There ain't a thing you can do for him," she said. "Them folks over Hartwood way, they'll do what they can. When the massa come home, mebbe he go an' get word for you. You ain't goin' over there no more."

"We wasn' doin' nothing," Meg protested feebly. "We wasn' even doin' nothing. We wasn' f-f-fornicatin'; didn' even kiss. We was too busy, doin' what we could for Pait 'n Minervy, an fo' that chile of Isaac's. She ain' gettin' 'nough to eat now Miz Sutcliffe know she sharin' the massa's bed. Twelve year old…"

She trembled again and tears squeezed out from beneath her tightly screwed lids. "Don' know how they even knowed I was there," she mourned. "Ain't been out that way fo' weeks 'n weeks."

"They's watchin' for you," Bethel murmured. "Somebody watchin'. That mis'ble man been lookin' to make trouble for Mist' Cullen: shamin' him in front the gentlefolks, tellin' sland'rous stories, now this. Now you tore up an' hurtin', an' Mist' Cullen in prison. Wicked, mis'ble, hateful man."

Meg drew in an unsteady, shuddering breath that came out in a thin, drawn-out sigh. "I's so tired," she whimpered, pressing her lips tightly closed against another wave of pain. "Bethel, I's tired."

"Then you try 'n sleep, honey," Bethel said firmly, glad of the chance to say something useful. "Jus' try 'n sleep, an' when you wake the doctor be here, an' ev'ything be better."

"Ain' never been see'd by no white-man doctor," Meg mumbled uncertainly.

"Doct' Whitehead a good man," declared Bethel. "He allus tooked care of Mist' Cullen when he caught sick as a li'l boy, an' he brung him into this world, too. Miss Caroline, she say he the gentles' man she ever knowed. Missus Mary say he kind an' clever," she added hastily. Miss Caroline's memory, so sacred to her, meant nothing to a woman who had been born years after the mistress's death.

"He goin' come jus' to look at a nigger?" said Meg, a note of skepticism bleeding through the weariness.

"He goin' do what Missus Mary ask," Bethel said, with more confidence than she felt.

She sat with Meg a while longer, perched on the edge of the old chair with the cracked spindle. She held one strong, roughened hand, palm and fingers stained dark with tobacco tar, and she watched as Meg's face eased a little way out of its harsh lines of torment. Her stilted breathing slowed and deepened as much as her torn back would allow. At last the hand between Bethel's went limp and the old woman released her hold. She picked herself up and moved silently to the door, lithe as an aged cat. She paused on the threshold, watching lest Meg should stir again. She did not. She was drowsing shallowly, worn out from the nightmare of the last twenty-four hours.

Bethel found Missus Mary in the dining room, standing at a corner of the table. A coarse burlap sack lay before her, its mouth curled back to reveal Meg's worn-out shoes. The shoestrings had been cut and the tongues lolled wide: they had been dragged off forcibly. Bethel was about to protest against leaving footwear on the dining table, when she saw what her young mistress was holding.

Missus Mary had Meg's dress in her hands: the good one that she only wore Sundays and when her other was being washed. The hem was dusty and flaked with dried mud from walking through the damp cotton field, but that was just a common hazard of country life. But Missus Mary had the bodice spread between her hands, each fist gripping tightly to one shoulder, and she was staring at it.

The back panel, broad across the shoulders and narrow at the base, had been cut clear in two, from the collar to the waist. Indeed, Bethel saw, someone had cut into it twice: between the two halves hung a thin strip of fabric a little less than an inch in width. It was joined to its lining only at the top and where the bordering slices ended, and the calico and the plain white cotton formed a limp noose against the pleats of the skirt. The collar was split, the bottoms of the cuts frayed where they had torn wider when someone – two someones – had laid hold of each arm and yanked the garment off of its wearer. The basque was gaping, too: half the buttons were gone and two of the buttonholes torn right through the strong folded edge of the front. Instead of taking the trouble to unfasten the garment properly, two strong men had merely slit it with a knife and ripped it from Meg's body.

"I don't know how to mend it," Missus Mary said. Her voice was hollow, shocked, and Bethel knew that the dress was not the lone cause of her distress. "I could stitch the two halves together again, but it would never fit her properly."

"It a shame," Bethel said, the words heartfelt. It was easier to think about the dress than about its owner, but only just. Meg only had the two dresses now, and this had been her best. The other was limp and tired and old, patched skillfully but obviously at the elbows, with a hem fraying thin. It was streaked with tobacco stains and faded across the back where the sun beat down while she stooped at her work. A woman, even a slave woman, ought to have one decent dress to wear on the Lord's Day, and Meg's was now ruined.

"There isn't enough cloth in the skirt to cut a new piece," Missus Mary went on. She seemed to be talking more to herself than to Bethel. "I could use a different cloth, but it would look so dreadful. I can't make up one of my dresses to fit her: her arms and shoulders are so much stronger, and she doesn't wear a corset." She closed her eyes. "There's the polished cotton from New York, but it just isn't practical."

"No," said Bethel. "No, it ain't pract'cal in the leas'. Don' you think 'bout usin' that cloth for Meg: your own mama chose it jus' for you. Dress made from that be too fine anyhow: Meg, she'd be scared to wear it. Know I would."

"She can't make do with only one dress," Mary protested. "What will she wear on washday?"

Bethel had no answer for this. Her own dresses were equally useless: Meg was a strong girl, and her shoulders and upper arms were firm with muscle from working the fields. They might let out a waist or tuck up a hem, but there was nothing that could be done to broaden the shoulders of a gown.

"How can such things happen?" Missus Mary asked miserably. "How can people be so cruel? How can a man who professes to be a Christian be capable of such hatefulness?"

She was not talking about the dress at all now. Bethel shook her head helplessly. "I don' know," she whispered.

Missus Mary crumpled the destroyed bodice between her hands and bent to bury her face in the fabric. Her shoulders shook with a silent sob. Before she could consider the properness of such an action, Bethel stepped forward and curled her arm around Missus Mary's shoulders as she had longed to do for Meg, bracing her and bearing her up. The slender body turned in towards her and the auburn head drooped against Bethel's neck.

"It's rotten, it's all rotten," Missus Mary choked out. "Everything…"

From the entryway came the rapping of knuckles on wood, and a mild voice called; "Miss Mary?"

She straightened hastily, dropping the rumpled rags upon the table and smoothing her hair. Bethel withdrew her arm and adjusted her apron, noticing only now the bloodstains upon it. There was no time to change. Missus Mary was already stepping around the door.

"Doctor Whitehead, thank you for coming!" she cried, hurrying towards him.

Bethel rounded the door more circumspectly, folding her hands as she had been taught as a girl and lowering her eyes. There was a trick to watching all that went on around a body without appearing to notice anything at all. In her first home it had been essential to a slave's prosperity and survival, and Bethel had excelled. Here, she only ever employed it in the presence of visitors.

The kindly-eyed doctor was standing with one foot on the threshold and the other on the veranda. He had his bag tucked under his arm, and Meg's torn petticoat in his hand. In the other he held a coiled bluejay, its twin knotted lashes dark with blood. Meg's blood, Bethel thought, and her anger rekindled.

"What's this?" he asked, looking distastefully at the instrument of cruelty. "Your man said one of your slaves has been whipped for a runaway and Cullen's in trouble? Miss Mary, what's happened?"

"I won't have that in my house!" Missus Mary said hoarsely, flicking her hand in loathing at the whip. She was very white, and Bethel could see the lace edging of her collar fluttering as she trembled. "Nate!" The broad-shouldered darkie was holding the reins: Bonnie's in his right hand and those of the doctor's horse in his left. "Nate, take it away. I want it burned."

Nate looped the lines loosely over the gatepost and came as far as the top step of the porch. He held out his hand and Doctor Whitehead handed him the lash. "Thank you, son," he said, brushing flakes of dried blood from his fingers. He came further into the house and reached to grip Missus Mary's elbow. "What's happened?" he asked again, far more gently.

"I'll explain as best I can," said Mary. "But Doctor, you must see to Meg first. She's been whipped, twice I think, and it's very bad. I don't… I don't know what to do for her. Please. I know you don't customarily take Negro patients, but if there's any way that I can persuade you…"

"That's only because folks don't customarily call me to see to their slaves," he reassured her, and Bethel felt the same gratitude towards him now as she had when she had stood in the corner of the bedroom and listened to him easing Miss Caroline from life. He was a good man, Doctor Whitehead. "I'll gladly tend to her; of course I will. Where is she?"

"Here," Mary said. "Through here. We thought it best not to try to get her down to the cabin. Doctor, she can scarcely stand…"

She led him through the parlor into the little room beyond, and Bethel followed, silent but watchful.

_*discidium*_

After a while, Cullen's nostrils grew accustomed to the stink. The pong of the honey-bucket, the reek of his cellmates' unwashed bodies, and the sour stench of cheap liquor from the man leaning against the bars all faded into a single low, unpleasant aroma that only just tickled at his nose and hung like a vile taste in the back of his throat. The squalor of the overcrowded cell was far less distressing than his enforced inaction. He could not fetch Doc Whitehead to see to Meg. He could not console his wife. He realized miserably that Mary would have to be the one to tell Bethel he had been arrested. He didn't envy her that conversation. And Nate. Nate would be livid with rage, as soon as Meg was out of danger. Cullen couldn't talk to him, couldn't tell him not to do anything foolish. If his son was frightened, he could not comfort him. If Lottie was distressed he could not calm her. If the tobacco barn was on fire, as it might well be right this minute, there was not a thing he could do about it. The helplessness made so complete by these bars and bare stone walls filled him with awful and impotent anger that turned quickly inward, from Abel Sutcliffe to himself.

Wrathfully he strode back down the length of the cell to the bars that made up the inner wall. Six swift steps, and six steps back. The third was the longest, because he had to stretch over the legs of the boy on the floor. How he could lie down there in the filth and the thin sprinkling of foul straw Cullen did not know, but he seemed oddly content: acclimatized already to his environment. He was a skinny thing, hipbones showing through ragged too-short pants. A Cracker, from the look of it: sallow and pale-eyed, anemic and no doubt undernourished. Cullen wondered what he had done to be locked up in here. Stolen, most likely. Cullen guessed food. Jail was a welcome change, then: board wasn't payable until release, and a man without a care for his word could eat on a lie and worry about the consequences later.

He turned and paced back to the bars. They were rough and rusted: his palms were smeared ruddy brown where he had seized them. He stared at his hands now, at the dark stains under the fresh grime, and he balled them into fists. Discolored nails dug deep in his flesh in a futile gesture that did nothing to ease his frustration. How the hell were two people supposed to bring in the tobacco that four had been struggling to keep pace with? Damn it, they weren't even finished bringing in the best leaves yet. If there was any delay now the quality of the remaining crop would suffer, and he could not afford that. Again he wondered whether the barn full of drying leaves was burning. Mary had said she would get word to him. She had promised.

But it was too soon to expect anything, of course. Too soon. Wasn't it? He had lost track of the time already, but no one had been by to feed Edwards and the others. It couldn't be one o'clock yet, then. He had been put in here before eleven. Yes, it was too soon.

"Will you stop that?" the man in the back corner demanded. "Ain't nowhere to go: why hurry to get there?"

Cullen stopped in mid-stride, a habitual polite apology on his lips. Then he stiffened. Why should he apologize? He had as much right to pace as the boy had to sprawl over the floor, or the man by the bars had to languish reeking next to the communal drinking water. He scowled at his challenger. "My hurrying's my own business. Best tend to yours," he said.

"First-timer," Edwards sang out from under the crude bunk. The man on top of it snorted and rolled onto his other side so that he was facing the wall.

"Not quite," said Cullen through his teeth, resuming his fruitless circuit of the room. He had been in one of these cells once before: the one on the very end of the opposite row. He had been nineteen, he remembered, calling to mind an incident he had not thought of in years. He and a few friends – Boyd Ainsley among them – had been whooping it up at the local watering-hole, and things had got a bit out of hand. Chairs had been thrown, blows landed, and the sheriff had arrived to round up the troublemakers. Cullen had owned up to being the one to throw the first punch, gallantly failing to add that he had been sorely provoked. He had spent the remainder of that night in a cell, and had been almost sober when his father had come to collect him the following morning.

Then, he had been the grandson of a pillar of the community with a bastion of wealth and influence behind him. No charges had been laid, of course, and he had been treated with all courtesy: a clean cell devoid of unsavory companionship, a hot mug of coffee, water in which to bathe his bloodied knuckles. The sheriff at the time had been eager to curry favor with Duncan Bohannon, who had considerable influence with the electorate. Now, the situation was entirely different. Cullen's pride might not regret that he was no longer tied to his grandpappy's watch-chain, but the practical side of him had to admit that a little influence would have been helpful in keeping him at home where he was needed.

"Mist' Cullen?" a deep voice hissed. "Mist' Cullen, you there?"

The sharp retort that he was damned well going to pace all he wanted died on his tongue as Cullen realized the voice was not coming from within the cell, but from outside the barred window. It had no glass and no shutters: only the iron grating with its narrow gaps that admitted air and light but little else. Hurriedly Cullen bolted back across the room to the window. He could just, by rising on his toes, rest his chin on the sill, but he could not see out. Hurriedly he leapt onto the corner of the board shelf. The man lying on it tried to shove him off but Cullen kicked at him and he desisted. Gripping the bars and pressing his face against them, Cullen looked down.

Nate was standing under the window, looking around in puzzlement. Cullen hissed and he peered up, his dark features melting into relief.

"What are you doing here?" Cullen demanded. The cell window looked out over the jailhouse yard: woodshed, privy, and chicken coop, but also pillory, stocks and whipping-post. There was old blood around the base of this last, and in the center of the yard was the bare space where the old gallows had been. The new ones had been erected on the other end of town where two abutting lots left plenty of room for the spectators that always flocked to a hanging.

"Came to bring you word," Nate said.

Cullen shook his head. "You ain't allowed back here. If the deputy catches you…"

"It were him tol' me which winder," said Nate. "Said you can' have no vis'tors 'til noon, an' I tol' him I can' wait. So he said he couldn' stop me if I wandered 'round back an' stood under this-here winder."

"That ain't true," said Cullen. "You can't just wander 'round outside a jailhouse talking to the prisoners."

Nate shrugged. "Guess mebbe he meant 'wouldn'' instead of 'couldn'', then. Missus Mary send me. She didn' know how I was to get word to you; said the doctor might know, but I thought, he come down here he goin' have questions for you, goin' wan' see you his own self, an' it goin' slow things down. Meg hurtin' bad, Mist' Cullen. She need him quick."

"Yes," Cullen agreed. "Quick as you can get him there. How bad is it, Nate? Is she going to be…"

He couldn't quite bring himself to say it.

Nate shook his head. "It bad, but Bethel say it ain' the wors' she's see'd. Won' know more 'til the doctor have his say, I reckon, but she strong, Mist' Cullen. Our Meg strong an' she brave. It the shame of it hurtin' her worstest. That an' knowin' she brung this here trouble on you."

"I brung this here trouble on all of us," Cullen said sourly; "and you can tell her that. What about the tobacco barn? Did you check the fires?"

"Yassir," Nate nodded. "They all burned down to ashes, but there weren't no sparks. Elijah set the fires fresh, an' he were sittin' with 'em when I left."

Cullen felt almost sick with relief. The man on the bunk hammered on his ankle again, but he was too overcome with gratitude to take much notice. "Thank God," he breathed. "Way things have gone this year I about figured we had a conflagration coming."

"A wha'?" asked Nate, frowning.

"Never mind," said Cullen. "You go and fetch the doctor. Tell Mary to try and pay him with notes if she can, not gold. Doc Whitehead's usually amenable. And Nate? I don't want Meg out in the fields 'til she's well. I'm relying on you and Elijah to keep pace until I'm free."

"Yassir," Nate agreed, nodding somberly. "When that be, then? When you goin' be free?"

"It sounds like they've got me up in front of a Justice of the Peace next Tuesday," Cullen said. "Meg will have to appear, too. Tell Mary. You'll have to drive her, but see you get written permission. Mary can do that: tell her."

"She know that, Massa," Nate said. From his trouser pocket he produced a creased piece of paper. "Gave me this here so I'd be all right to come to town."

"Good." Cullen nodded, but he was burning with self-loathing. Mary had better sense than he. If he'd only given Meg a slip of paper like that, this whole ugly mess could never have brewed up as it had. "It ain't going to be easy, keeping up with the tobacco with two hands short," he said. "You've got to manage somehow."

"We'll manage," Nate promised.

"Now get on out of here. Find Doc Whitehead and you tell him I need him to look at Meg. Tell him."

"He don' wan' come, I's goin' drag him," declared Nate fiercely. "She tore up bad, Mist' Cullen. Ain't nothin' she ever done deserved a whuppin' like that!"

"I know," Cullen breathed, closing his eyes.

Nate's voice was hard now, and his glowering gaze bored into Cullen's skull. "I warned you," he said. "Months 'n months ago I warned you: ain't no good ever come from whackin' a hornets' nest."

Cullen's lips grew thin, pressed tightly together, but he was in no position to chastise his slave now. Nate had work to do: work that would not wait. "Go and fetch the doctor," he said. "I want you and Elijah back in them fields this afternoon. The tobacco won't wait, and we got to get those leaves out of the bottom field before they're overripe. Top field don't matter so much: let it go if you have to. But bring in the stuff worth selling."

Nate's eyes, unyielding as anthracite, never wavered from Cullen's face as he nodded. "Yassir, Massa," he said. "Yassir."

Then he was gone, trotting along the wall and swiftly out of Cullen's narrow field of vision. He sighed and released the bars, falling back on his heel with his left foot still dangling in open air.

A blow to the back of his right knee made his leg buckle and he came crashing down in an undignified heap on hands and knees. The grit of the floor ground through his trousers and into his palm. His kneecaps burned. "Stay off my damned bed!" the man on the rough cot bellowed.

_*discidium*_

It was like waiting outside the sickroom of a dying loved one, Mary thought. She sat on the récamier with her hands in her lap, fingers gripping one another and twisting, ankles crossed primly beneath the broadly spread skirts of her work dress. How had the day gone so horribly amiss? She had awakened so cheerful, so filled with joy at the sunrise and happiness over Cullen's restful Sunday. She had been so ready, almost eager, to face the week's work. Now her husband was in prison and the house was in an uproar, and one of her people – no, one of her_ slaves_, for that was what they were however she wished to forget it – was lying stripped and bloody on Bethel's bed while Doctor Whitehead looked to see whether she had been permanently crippled, or merely disfigured. It seemed like a terrible dream, but Mary knew it was not.

Bethel was standing in the doorway of her little room, her unreadable back to Mary. Not a sound had been heard from upstairs, but Mary suspected that Gabe and Lottie were crouched at the top of the steps together, ears perked to hear what was going on below. Nate had related to her what he had learned from Cullen before heading off to the tobacco barn to consult with Elijah. Someone had to watch the fires while they were in the fields, but neither Mary nor Bethel could leave the house while the doctor was present, and Mary refused to force Lottie any farther from her mother than was absolutely necessary. The tobacco would just have to wait another hour or two: that was all there was to it.

Cullen was to go up before a Justice of the Peace in eight days' time. Eight days. Mary felt cold nausea rising at that thought. They could not spare him for two days, much less a whole week. And eight days in prison, with nothing to do but sit and worry, would be a torment for him. He fretted over a lost morning spent in buying stores and collecting the mail. He would chafe against captivity. The thought of her fiercely energetic husband confined in a cell made Mary shiver. He would be so wretchedly angry and lost in his helplessness. She knew he wanted to be here, overseeing the efforts to put right what had somehow gone so dreadfully wrong: she knew it because it was where she wanted to be herself. That he wouldn't be able to do anything more than she was doing already meant nothing: he would still want to be here. It would drive him to distraction that he could not be. Eight days! It was unimaginable.

Bethel stepped back, swiftly but smoothly as only a practiced house-servant can. Sometimes, when Bethel did such things, Mary thought she had a grace that the finest London-trained ladies' maids could not equal. It said more about her early life in South Carolina than Bethel's straightforward account of her tale ever had.

Doctor Whitehead came out of the room, wiping his bloody hands on a rag. He had removed his coat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled high above his elbows. He looked careworn and tired, and he approached Mary with a diffidence that terrified her.

"Doctor?" she breathed, dreading what he would say.

He drew up the chair from the secretary and sat near her. His soft eyes drew hers away from his hands towards his face. "She'll be all right," he said. "It's going to take time and gentle care. I've applied a liniment to help prevent infection, and I've dressed her back. I had to pack some of the deeper lacerations with lint. Those will be from the knots." He shook his head. "Damn the man who invented the bluejay."

"Bluejay?" echoed Mary.

"That whip," said the doctor. "It's just about the cruellest tool he could have chosen. Even with the very best of care she's going to have scars that she'll carry all her life. I can't do anything about that, Miss Mary. I'm sorry."

Mary managed not to cry out, but only just. She hung her head and nodded. "Thank you, Doctor," she said. "I'm sure you've done your best for her."

"Go ahead and give her more anodyne if she's in pain," he went on. "The dressings should be changed twice a day: Bethel watched me and she'll know what to do. If she takes a fever or isn't able to walk around by tomorrow evening you send for me again, you hear? She should be fit for light work in two or three days' time, but no lifting of heavy objects and absolutely _no _carrying of anything across the back or shoulders until the wounds have healed completely. She needs a plentiful diet of good, wholesome foods as soon as she's well enough to eat them. Red meat to restore the vigor of the blood: beef would be best, but anything will do. Have you wine?"

Mary nearly shook her head, and then remembered the half-dozen bottles her father had sent. "Yes!" she exclaimed, almost delighted.

"A drink of red wine each night before bed," the doctor said. "That's what I'd advise, anyhow. I know plenty of folks don't approve of such remedies for Negroes, but if you want to build up her strength—"

"We'll give her wine," Mary pledged. "Is there anything else?"

Doctor Whitehead's expression was very sad. "Be gentle with her," he said softly. "She's been through a terrible ordeal. I've never seen a slave so upset by a beating, but then she ain't used to such things, living here. Like a pony who ain't been broke to the bit, poor child. She needs your kindness as her mistress: that's the best thing you can give her now."

Mary was about to protest that of course Meg had her kindness, but she held her tongue. He was giving her advice, she realized, as if she had never dealt with darkies before. As if she were newly come to the county, or young and inexperienced like little Sarah White. He was earnestly trying to be helpful. She inclined her head.

"And the blotch in her left eye: she's just broken one of the small vessels, and it looks much more frightening than it is. Her vision seems to be intact, and the mark will fade on its own. Now," said the doctor, voice growing very grave; "what's this about Cullen being taken away to jail?"

Mary explained as best she could, but she could tell she was not relaying the story properly. As she spoke Doctor Whitehead's brow furrowed more and more deeply with bewilderment, and his kind eyes grew clouded with puzzlement. When she had finished he shook his head.

"That don't make no sense at all, Miss Mary," he said. "The way you tell it, it sounds like Mr. Sutcliffe and Mr. Brannan plotted together just to get Cullen arrested."

"I believe they did!" Mary exclaimed. "Don't you see? Meg has been going over to Hartwood for over a decade, and there's never been any trouble over it until now. Certainly Mr. Sutcliffe could not possibly have thought her a runaway: it's absurd! And the way the sheriff goaded Cullen into saying just those words… they were trapping him into a clear admission of guilt under the law. Then to threaten to take Meg to prison, the state she's in – it was ghastly."

The doctor shook his head. "I don't know, ma'am. That seems mighty spiteful, even for Abel Sutcliffe. I know he ain't fond of your husband, and I know there's been trouble between them. That business with the tradesmen was downright mean-spirited, but—"

"What business with the tradesmen?" Mary said sharply. It was the first that she had heard of this.

Doctor Whitehead sighed. "Mr. Sutcliffe went around Meridian putting a word in the ear of just about every merchant Cullen might need credit from between now and the end of November, talking about how the hailstorm wiped out your crop and you've got nothing worth selling."

"But that isn't true!" protested Mary. "We did lose some tobacco, but what we have left certainly _is_ worth selling. Cullen's been working himself ragged trying to bring it in: he wouldn't do that if it were worthless."

One gray eyebrow arched ever so briefly, but Doctor Whitehead only sighed. "Be that as it may, Miss Mary, I can't imagine even Abel Sutcliffe would do something this cruel. You can't be without Cullen for a week; there's no doubt about that. And he won't stand a week in jail, fretting about everything back home."

"I know," Mary said fervently. "But what can I do? I offered what money we have as surety, and the sheriff refused."

He shook his head helplessly. "I don't know, ma'am," he said. "Ordinarily I'd suggest having a quiet word with his accuser, trying to persuade him to change his mind about pressing the matter, but in this case I know Cullen wouldn't want you to do it. You can't go over to Hartwood, and you shouldn't have anything to do with Mr. Sutcliffe, especially not with your husband from home. You might petition the court to move up his date of appearance, but there's only tomorrow's session and Friday to do it in and it might be dismissed anyway. Eight days' wait ain't so unreasonable, however much it's going to hurt you all. Miss Mary, I'm afraid I don't know what to do."

The tiny hope that Mary had nourished of finding succor from the dear old man who had brought her boy so ably into the world was snuffed out. Doctor Whitehead was just as helpless as she; just as stunned and saddened and bewildered by this spiteful blow dealt in the name of justice. She could see from the stoop of his shoulders how out of his depth he was, and how much it pained him to admit he could not aid her. She thought briefly of the Ainsleys, and wondered whether Boyd might help, but laid by that notion. Boyd simply was not worldly; he would be lost in this perfect snare that Mr. Sutcliffe had made, more helpless even than she and Cullen had proved. There was no one to aid her. If she was to do anything at all, she would have to work out a strategy for herself.

She smoothed her skirts serenely and smiled gently at the man before her. "Thank you anyhow, Doctor Whitehead. And thank you for tending to Meg. Would you take a cup of coffee before you depart? Or we have tea; my brother brought it from New York."

The corners of his eyes crinkled into a tired smile. "I'd admire that, Miss Mary. Thank you," he said.


	41. Meg's Peter

**Chapter Forty-One: Meg's Peter**

The weight of burning rage crushed Nate's ribs and made breathing a labor. He had neither words nor emotions enough to contain it. It festered on his tongue and oozed out of his eyes and filled every muscle in his body with quivering hate. He was filled with wrath and hot, killing spite. And his utter impotence made it all so much worse.

He slipped quietly through the parlor, where Lottie was lying under a brightly-colored quilt on the récamier. The child was asleep at last, her face smoothed out of its lines of distress. Missus Mary had been good enough to give her leave to stay up at the house tonight, and if Nate hadn't been so full-up with wrath he would have been grateful to her. Meg was in Bethel's bed, and where Bethel was going to sleep was anyone's guess and no one's business. Nate certainly wasn't about to ask her. He cast one last look at Lottie, taking some comfort from the child's peaceful countenance, and hurried out of the room. He hardly ever had cause to be in the parlor, and it made him uncomfortable, but he had wanted – had needed – to see Meg once more before he went to his bed, and to do that he had to pass through this place that had always represented the indolence and ease of the white man. Tonight, although it was ridiculous, the room reminded him not of Mister Cullen, who was sitting tonight in a stinking cell in the jail in Meridian, but of the other man; the man in the pale suit on his big, strong horse. The sneering man who had taken a whip to Meg, sweet, kind, beautiful Meg who had never done a wicked thing in her life.

Nate wanted to kill him. He had never wanted anything so much in all his life. He wanted to strangle him, to bash his skull in with a stone, to cut him open like a pig and watch his entrails spill out. He understood now the loathing and the righteous fury that drove men like Nat Turner and John Brown to do the things they had done. He could have happily gone charging on Hartwood and dragged that bastard Sutcliffe from his feather bed and hacked him to pieces on the pristine front lawn for what he had done to Meg.

The beating was bad enough, but she was broken with the fear and humiliation. In the first panic and chaos of her return he had thought only of her bodily hurts, but seeing her now he knew that long after they were healed something deep inside would remain torn, shattered, forever wounded. Her trust in the order of the world was gone: her firm and charmingly naïve belief that if she lived a good life, if she stayed a good nigger and worked hard and remained loving and loyal she would be protected from suffering. Her master had failed to protect her; had in fact, however unwittingly, put her in harm's way. That loss of faith, that loss of innocence, _that_ was what Abel Sutcliffe had done to her just to land another blow in his pointless fight with Mister Cullen.

Nate was surprised that he did not feel more antipathy towards his own master, whose stubborn refusal to coexist peacefully with a dangerous neighbor had set the stage for this travesty. It shouldn't matter that Mister Cullen had been horrified and sickened and enraged by what had been done to Meg. It shouldn't matter that he had done what was only right and just and human and let himself be taken in her place. It shouldn't matter that his worries for her had overridden all his other concerns when Nate had spoken to him through the bars of the jail. Yet somehow it did. Mister Cullen had never meant for this to happen. He knew his fault and he knew his guilt and he did not hide from either. And somehow, strangely, Nate found that he had to respect that.

All his life, it seemed, he had wasted his spite. He had squandered it resenting a man who, when pushed to the brink of desperation, still did the right and honorable thing. He had brewed up reasons to dislike and distrust Mister Cullen when there were monsters like Abel Sutcliffe abroad in the world. Monsters whose crimes perhaps really did need to be purged away with blood.

The dining room was dark. Missus Mary had probably gone to her bed. It was past time for sleeping, and Nate's exhaustion was thick. After the doctor had left, the mistress herself had come down to the tobacco barn to watch the fires so that Bethel could care for Meg and Lottie could stay near her mother. Elijah had explained what to do, and then the two men had hurried to the tobacco patch where they had worked like demons to try to make up for lost time and absent hands. They had failed, of course, but they had still filled several poles with broad, healthy leaves in the prime of their ripeness. Now Elijah was out in the barn, and Nate would relieve him halfway through the night. The good Lord only knew what they would do tomorrow. With six able adults and determined little Lottie, they had just barely been managing to keep the plantation running. Now that Meg was abed and Mister Cullen in prison, Nate had no idea how they would cope. Maybe Meg would be a little stronger tomorrow: strong enough, at least, that Lottie would feel able to take a turn at tending the kiln. That would be something. There was so much to be done this time of year, and so few folk to do it.

Nate moved through the dining room and into the kitchen, and he stopped short. He had expected to find Bethel cleaning up the last of the supper things. Instead she was stirring a large pot of bubbling brine. The table was covered in crockery, and into each earthenware jar Missus Mary was stuffing trimmed okra. The good lamp from the dining room had been brought in to light the work, and the two women were laboring with the same workaday diligence as if it were the middle of the afternoon.

"Missus!" Nate said, caught unawares.

She looked up at him. There were soft brown circles beneath her eyes. She looked exhausted, but she managed a small smile. "Nate," she said softly. "How is she?"

"Goin' try to sleep, ma'am," Nate said, glancing back over his shoulder and wishing he had just crept out the front door in defiance of a lifetime of training. "Ain' so bad now her back been bandaged. Doctor did a right proper job."

It had indeed been easier to see Meg as she was now, with her wounds hidden and her chest covered by the broad bands of linen. It made Nate sick to think of the many times he had imagined seeing Meg's breasts. He had fantasized about it as a young man, dreamed about it in the deep of the night all the years since. He had wanted to see her body, bare and beautiful… but not like this. Never, ever like this. He prayed to God that this wasn't a punishment on him, for yearning after her all these years and coveting another man's wife. Surely God could not be so cruel as to torment Meg just to pass judgment on him.

Missus Mary nodded quietly. "Thank you for taking care of her today," she said. "For bringing her into the house, for fetching the doctor, for letting Mr. Bohannon know we're looking after her as best we can. I don't know what we would have done without you."

"Jus' doin' what's right, Missus Mary," mumbled Nate. He watched her smooth, rosy hands flying from jar to jar, packing them with the vegetables to be pickled. She wasn't like any white woman he'd ever seen before. She was capable and she was brave. She wasn't afraid of hard work, and she wasn't afraid of that bastard Sutcliffe, and she wasn't afraid to take charge when Mister Cullen was gone. She wasn't even afraid to fetch a white doctor to tend to a slave, or to pay out two dollars for the treatment when there wasn't even money for food. She was a good mistress.

"You et anythin' yet?" Bethel asked. "Seem like this whole fam'ly been starvin' themselves today. There cornbread in the box, an' boilt eggs in the pantry. Got cold hominy too, if you'd rather have that, an' radishes." She shook her head and sighed. "I hope they's feedin' Mist' Cullen right. I never heared no good 'bout jail food."

"Ellie, what keeps house for the doctor, she say Miz Dayton a good cook," Nate offered. He had exchanged only a few words with the middle-aged slave while the physician put on his coat and fetched his bag, but those had been among them.

Bethel harrumphed softly, only somewhat mollified. "How Ellie know that?" she asked. "She ever been locked up in that there jail?"

"Please don't speak about it," Missus Mary breathed. Her face had gone quite white again; almost as white as it had been when she stood on the porch watching the master and the sheriff grappling over the shackles with Meg still in them.

"He all right, Missus," Nate said, suddenly anxious to comfort her. "He say we gots to keep this here place runnin' the bes' we can 'til he come home. I's goin' make sure Elijah all right, then I gots to get a li'l sleep 'fore it my turn to watch."

He skirted around the table, head bowed respectfully towards the mistress, and put his hand on the door.

"You take some of that cornbread!" Bethel barked imperiously. She was shaking another cup of salt into the water, stirring vigorously to force it to dissolve. "Don' you make me leave this here stove to fetch it. Cornbread, eggs, radish. You take some fo' Elijah, too."

Nate obeyed her meekly, going first to the breadbox and then into the pantry. Juggling the foodstuffs he was finally able to escape the kitchen and the disconcerting sight of the mistress now divvying up bulbs of garlic among the pickle-pots. The only unfortunate thing was now he really did have to stop by the tobacco barn. Bethel was too distraught with worry over the master to try to divine his thought, and Missus Mary likely didn't know him well enough, but Elijah was sure to suspect that something was up.

Still, he couldn't deny the old man his food. They were all getting little enough of the really substantive stuff at present, and though satiated at the end of a meal were always ravenous two hours later. Nate relished fresh vegetables, and Bethel had a knack for preparing them in a hundred delicious ways, but they just didn't fill a man. He wanted meat, and he wanted it bad. Now that Mister Cullen was away he could try and do something about that himself, but it would have to wait until tomorrow. He had more important work to do tonight.

The glow of the fires showed around the edges of the door of the kiln, and Nate found his way with ease by the light of the low moon. He nudged the door open and the ringing of the hammer ceased. Elijah looked up from the box he was building.

"How Meg feelin'?" he asked immediately, his grizzled brows knit anxiously.

"Ain't so bad no more," said Nate. "Doctor done right by her. But she pow'ful distressed." He set the bread and eggs on the crate beside the old man's hip. "Bethel sen' these."

Elijah chuckled ruefully. "I s'pose she still upset none of us et any breakfas' this mornin'," he said. "Woman don' understand there times when a man jus' can' eat, however he try." He exhaled heavily and cocked his head, peering carefully at Nate's face. The orange flicker of the fires and the dancing yellow light of the battered tin lantern cast strange shadows in the deep wrinkles of age. "What you goin' do, boy?" he demanded suddenly. "You ain' goin' make trouble."

"Ain't intendin' to," Nate said. "Mebbe trouble goin' find me anyhow."

Elijah threw down the hammer and shot to his feet, remembering just in time to duck so that his head did not collide with the tobacco leaves. He sidestepped to the narrow aisle beneath the anchoring rails. One fist rammed against his hip, and the opposite index finger flew up under Nate's nose. "You ain' goin' over Hartwood way to make trouble for Mist' Cullen!" he declared viciously. "That boy had 'nough trouble this day to las' him through to Christmas, an' if you means to go make more, I'm goin' lay you out right here!"

Nate's jaw clamped like a vise, and his shoulders jerked back indignantly. "You jus' try it, an' see what happens!" he snapped. "You ain't foreman no more, an' I gots forty years on you. Jus' try it."

"You a damn fool!" Elijah cried. "What you think they goin' do if somethin' happen to that man? They goin' come here straight away. An' Mist' Cullen ain' goin' be able to take no fall for you like he done for Meg: he in jail, thank God. You the one goin' hang. Or mebbe they jus' beat you to death right in Bethel's dooryard. How you like that? Meg an' the missus an' them two chillun a-watchin' a posse of crazed white men whup you 'til you got no hide lef'."

"I ain' goin' kill 'im," Nate snarled. "God know he need killin' bad, but I ain't goin' do it. Would have, swear I would if he'd touched her, but Bethel say…" He released a hot, pent-up breath that stirred the leaves over his left shoulder. "Meg tol' Bethel he didn' do nothin' but whup her. That be bad enough, but it ain' worth my hide nor the trouble it'd bring down on the family to kill 'im over."

"You can' lick 'im neither," said Elijah. "Nor burn his hay nor bus' up his winders. Ain' a thing you can do won' get traced back here. You got to take it. We all gots to take it. If'n we didn', Mist' Cullen wouldn' be locked up this very minute. If he got take it, you got take it. Ain' nothin' you can do."

"I can sneak into them quarters an' ask after Peter," said Nate. The fight had gone out of his voice, and he felt very small and useless. That was all he could do: go and fetch news for Meg like some scrawny little pickaninny. He couldn't do the things a man ought to be able to do when the woman he loved was outraged, beaten, abused by a stranger. If Missus Mary had had her clothes torn off and her back whipped raw by Sutcliffe, Mister Cullen would have killed him. Could have killed him, and nobody would question his right. But Nate didn't have that right. Meg wasn't his wife, and she was black, and he was black. He was a slave: he didn't have the right to be a man. "I can fin' out what they done to him, I can tell Meg if he 'live or dead. I can do that, at leas'."

Elijah's hand dropped to his side, and the other slipped from his hip. His shoulders slumped and his grey head bobbed in a weary nod. "Yup," he sighed. "Yup, that you can do, awright. But if they catch you, they's goin' whup you jus' the same as they whupped Meg."

"I been whupped before," Nate said defiantly. He pointed back in the direction of the house. "She lyin' up there frettin' hersel' into a state, thinkin' they done beat her man to death. I kin go fin' out if it so, an' I can tell her, one way or t'other. I's goin' do it, an' no fear of whuppin' goin' stop me. You ain' goin' stop me, neither."

"No, I ain't," said Elijah. "Jus' you be careful. Don' take no weapon: not even a stick. They catch you with a weapon, they goin' kill you an' ask questions later. Don' make no trouble. An' come back safe. You's needed here."

He was needed, all right. With Mister Cullen in prison, Nate was the only able young man on the place. He sighed tightly and nodded. "You see I gots to go, Elijah, don' you?"

"Someone gots to," said Elijah. "Don' suppose you'd let it be me?"

Nate shook his head. The older man sighed, unsurprised. Then before Elijah could say anything more, Nate hurled himself out into the darkness and started at a run for the eastern property line.

_*discidium*_

As it turned out, the bars did not admit light and air alone. The cold came in, too. As the night deepened, the temperature in the cell dropped despite the seven bodies crowded into it. Unable to even consider sleep, Cullen stood canted against the wall, shivering in his shirtsleeves and trying desperately to stop ruminating over things he could not change. There were problems enough in the present and worries aplenty in the future without strangling himself in the tangled web of the mistakes of the past. Still he kept coming back to them time and again until he felt he would go mad.

Someone was groaning far down the corridor, from the direction of the Negro cells. The sound was muffled behind a forearm, but Cullen could hear the wretched despair nonetheless. He wondered who was making the sound; man or woman, whose slave and why. For a moment he felt a breath of peace, knowing that at least it was not his Meg suffering in terror and agony in this fetid place. Those raw wounds across her back would have festered already in this atmosphere. He couldn't smell the stink at all anymore, but he knew it was there. He could still taste it, faintly, whenever his tongue touched his lips.

In his anxiety over Meg and his fears about the untended fires, he had forgotten to send Nate with words of comfort for Mary. He wondered how she was coping. He knew she could manage routine plantation business without him: she did it for a fortnight every year when he was in New Orleans. He trusted her judgment and her intelligence and her capacity for creative problem-solving. But he had not left her with routine plantation business. He had left her with two crises: Meg, and the tobacco that had to be brought in steadily without interruption before the top-quality leaves grew too ripe and lost their value. She had known to fetch the doctor for Meg; that was just about all that could be done. But even Cullen did not know what to do about the tobacco. How would she manage? He hoped, he prayed that she would not consider working it herself. Anything but that. He closed his mind against the fearful image of his wife stooping in the mud, soaking her skirts with the noxious dew and soiling her hands with tobacco tar. Anything, anything, anything but that.

Another tremor took him. It was the deep of the night: second-shift time in the kiln. At this time of night his body almost always seemed taken with chills, even in the heat of the three smoldering fires. He knew he should try to sleep. It had been a long day, exhausting despite the fact that he had not really labored at all. He would be irritable and irrational without sleep, and a jail was not a place where a man wanted to be irritable and irrational. He had a knack for getting himself into trouble when he wasn't thinking straight. The present predicament was proof enough of that.

Still he couldn't bring himself to sit, much less find a few square feet in which to lie down. His hips ached and his heels were burning, inadequately supported on the stone floor by his worn-out work-boots. But the ground was filthy and the air thick with foul vapors down there. The man on the cot had not bestirred himself once all day, not even to take his bowl at dinner and suppertime. He had bullied the boy into fetching it for him. At dinner Cullen had not even been able to think about food, but when the others were given their evening meal his stomach had churned unpleasantly. Joe's wife and widowed sister-in-law kept the jail and fed the prisoners, and although the former was a pointless exercise they seemed to do the latter quite well. They had served up a supper of beef stew and cornbread, with tin cups of buttermilk. Cullen's cellmates had all eaten with relish, and only watching the skinny youth at his meal had kept him from dwelling overmuch on his own hunger. That boy was starving, and no mistake. Cullen was curious to know his story, but he knew better than to ask.

He tried again to focus on working out some means of putting right his situation. His slave had been unjustly beaten, and he had been unjustly charged. Well, the charge itself was true, but it had been laid in such a way that it surely had to represent entrapment. There had to be some way for him to salvage justice out of this mess, but Cullen couldn't fathom it. He didn't have patience for learning legislation and legal rigmarole: that was what had put him in this situation in the first place. Sheriff Brannan had made a joke of him requesting counsel when charged with a misdemeanor, but it was starting to seem more and more like a solid idea to Cullen.

There were two problems, of course. He had no means to pay a lawyer, and every attorney in the county had close ties to Abel Sutcliffe. He had read law at university, and although he did not practice – men worth fifty thousand a year in cotton alone did not need to practice anything at all – he was still active and well-respected in the legal community. Cullen supposed he was fortunate the man had ambitions to higher office as soon as his wife's health might allow, and had therefore eschewed to serve as Justice of the Peace himself. Still, he would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Lauderdale County willing to take his case at all, much less to defer the fee until his crop was sold.

For the first time in his life, Cullen regretted that his father had not sent him to the College in Clinton. Every law student he had known at school was now practicing in Alabama. He could try to get ahold of one of them, all right, but the delays in getting approval for an Alabama attorney to practice in a Mississippi court would be worse than simply waiting to see what Mr. Graham might mete out next Tuesday. Jesse Whitehead was reading law, but he had a ways to go before he was admitted to the bar. Another year and a half, Cullen thought. Still, even if he couldn't appear on his behalf he might have some advice as to how to get out of this mess. Maybe in the morning he could get word to Doc and…

"Shit!" he exclaimed, startled by a sudden epiphany.

The man lying nearest his feet stirred and snorted, and the one lying propped in the back corner of the cell mumbled a drowsy; "Shaddup!" Cullen ignored both of them. His mind was whirring with the speed of a millwheel in a flood-bloated creek.

He knew another lawyer, a Mississippi lawyer. He had met him at the Ainsley party. A friend of one of the Ives boys, visiting from Kemper County. He had a small practice in Scooba, and he sometimes took defense work when there was any about. They had got on well, he and Cullen, and at some point in the evening he had said, in the affably offhand and yet deadly earnest manner of young professionals, that if Cullen ever had a bit of legal work to be sure and send it his way. Of course he had likely been thinking about land deals or probate or business contracts, but this here was legal work all right, if he'd consent to wait a while for payment. And a young lawyer with a quiet country practice might: a promissory fee was better than no fee at all.

But what was his name?

Cullen wracked his brain. He could remember every detail of the man's appearance, but his name eluded him. He had been a bit above average height, which was to say a little taller than Cullen himself. Dark hair and a thin, thoughtful face. Slender shoulders and soft, bookish hands. A well-made suit of somewhat inferior cloth; grey kid gloves. Clean-shaven with a pleasant smile and a wry way of lilting his head when someone said something irritating. They had talked about the law, and Ives had given him a hard time about some case involving a trapper and a runaway. Then the other two had gone off in search of liquor, and Cullen and the lawyer had fallen to discussing first legal ethics, and then horses. The man had an eye for good horseflesh, and had admired Pike and Bonnie from afar. He had said Cullen must come north and do a little hunting with him when the season came… but what was the man's name?

The Ives boys would know, of course, but that was useless. Cullen could hardly summon them up to the jail to be interrogated about an out-of-county friend. Mary! The man had danced with Mary, and he had been seated next to her at supper. She would remember his name: she had a knack for names that came from being raised in a city with over a half a million residents. But Mary was six miles away, hopefully fast asleep, and Cullen had given instructions to Nate that the plantation had to keep running at all costs. That meant there was no hope of Mary coming to town, and he had no money on him to pay a boy to run a message out to the plantation. He might send word by Doc Whitehead, but he was reluctant to ask such a favor. Glad though the physician undoubtedly would be to oblige him, Cullen did not want to be beholden for this when there was every chance that he would have to ask an even greater consideration in the very near future.

He could always just have Joe send a telegram addressed to the lawyer in Scooba, but there might be more than one. In any case it was not an auspicious start to a business relationship that had to be built on credit to call upon a friendly acquaintanceship without being able to recall the man's name. He had to remember it, that was all there was to it. John, Jack, James, something…

But the harder he thought, the more deftly it eluded him, as the hours crawled chillingly on towards dawn and his cellmates slept.

_*discidium*_

Nate had given up visiting old friends at Hartwood years ago, when it became simply too miserable to do so. The quarters of the neighboring plantation were a pit of squalor and desolation where miserable people tried as hard as they could to find a little pleasure or happiness in a bitter life. In the past, whenever Nate had felt inclined to think more favorably of his own master and to lay by his old resentments he had thought of this place, and of the miserable downtrodden haunts that inhabited it. This was slavery: this was what the complicity of men like Mister Cullen allowed. And even though the Bohannon slaves were well treated, propping up men like Sutcliffe to work his people to the bone for profit and beat them and starve them and rape them was a sin. That was what Nate believed, and he still believed it even if he could not bring himself to hate his old friend now when he was brought so low by misfortune and still found the strength to do whatever he could to protect his people. Slavery was the sin, and Hartwood was the blight it brought upon the world.

He crept carefully to the edge of the field of yams, restraining the urge to uproot the nearest hill and fill his shirt with stolen bounty. Sutcliffe wouldn't miss them: had no earthly use for them. And there hadn't been yams at home for months now. But that was just envy and foolishness talking. Pilfered yams wouldn't bring the sheriff to Missus Mary's door, but they would bring trouble on the heads of innocent slaves at Hartwood, who would be the natural suspects if the broken hill was noticed.

Silent as a shadow Nate slipped between two cabins, going carefully so as not to trip on a crate or a sawn-down barrel or any of the other trappings of a community that lurked between buildings. He had left his shoes outside the tobacco barn, and his bare feet made no sound. He stepped in something wet and slippery, and grimaced in disgust, wiping his foot on the packed earth. He'd forgotten how it was to have little children running around. Even on happier plantations there was only so much that busy parents and aged caregivers could do to keep them diapered.

Finding the foreman's cabin was simple enough. It was small, but it was soundly built and the windows actually had shutters – a rarity at Hartwood. There was still a little moonlight to steer by, and Nate came up beside the door. He did not climb up onto the half-log that served as a stoop, but reached across the doorway to rap lightly on the wood.

There was a snort and some unintelligible mumbling from within. Nate knocked again, faintly but unmistakably. The puncheon floor, another luxury, creaked as someone stumped across, and the door swung inward on sagging leather hinges. Only just discernable against the faint embers of a tiny cooking-fire was a large, broad-shouldered man with a shaved head. He was tall, but not as tall as Meg's Peter. A friend, no doubt, come to help in a time of need. Nate had not had much hope for the man's welfare, but what little he'd harbored died now.

"Who you?" the man grunted. He sounded groggy and still half-asleep. "What you want?"

"I've come from Meg," Nate whispered. "The foreman's woman. She wants news of him."

"Ain't got no woman," growled the strange Negro. "Man lasts longer 'round here if he keep his hands to himself, an' to _himself_, you take my meaning." He made a crude but very eloquent gesture with one hand.

Nate, who had never known any other kind of pleasure with his heart so perfectly lost, nodded. "No cause to fight with anyone," he agreed. "Peter in there?"

"Peter?" The man snorted and spat into the dust, narrowly missing Nate's bare toes. "Peter don' live her no more. Ain't foreman no more, neither. Massa don' take kin'ly to foreman as can' ten' they own business."

Nate's throat went dry. He had always been envious of Peter, it was true, but he had never wished him harm. He had never imagined, either, that he might have to be the one to bring Meg news of her husband's death. Was God punishing him for all his sins in one awful day of universal suffering?

"Then he… he dead?" he croaked.

"No." The new foreman's tone lost some of its combative edge. "No, but I 'spects he wish he was. He down in the bunkhouse with the other fiel' hands as ain' got families." He pointed towards the longest of the crude log buildings. "Goin' lay his head there from now on, an' he goin' work like the nigger he be: no more givin' orders an' puttin' on airs for him!"

"No," Nate said coldly. "No, that your job now, ain't it?"

"You watch youself, nigger," the foreman warned. "You's trespassin', aft' all. I gots to keep me in good with them overseers."

"No, you goin' let me be," said Nate matter-of-factly. "'Cause them folk you goin' be bossin' tomorrow? They all like Peter, an' they ain' goin' take kindly to no up-'n-comer denyin' his wife word of him. Bes' get back to bed now. Got a new job to git to come morning."

The man bristled, but he knew the truth of what Nate was saying. A discontented workforce could make a lot of trouble for a foreman, and his position gave him no immunity from the wrath of the overseers or the vindictive whims of the master. "Go quiet," he said. "They's dogs about."

"Thanks," Nate said grudgingly. The big man disappeared inside, and Nate set his eyes on the field hands' bunkhouse. He skittered from cabin to cabin instead of cutting across the broad square in the midst of the huts. When he came to the one he sought he groped until he found the door. Instead of solid wood his hand met coarse wool: a blanket was pegged up over an empty hole in the wall. He drew it aside and slipped through even before he realized that his actions had bared a light within.

The long, narrow room was thick with smoke and the stench of sour sweat. Men were lying on the dirt floor, some pillowed on dirty straw and others with moldering blankets. Only one or two had thin sheets over their bodies. Most were in some state of undress. Ragged shirts and threadbare trousers hung on crudely-whittled pegs. The heat of the closed space was awful despite the cold night.

In the corner farthest from the door a feeble light flickered. It was a goose-grease lamp with a twist of linen threaded through a wooden button to serve as a wick. By its light Nate could see the figure lying prostrate upon what appeared to be the only straw-tick in the building. His long legs protruded far off the battered, inadequate mattress, and his arms were curled above his head. His back was a pulpy mass of torn tissue and blood, and his buttocks and thighs were scored as well. His upper arms appeared to have escaped the worst of it: he had been strung up by his wrists, just the same as Meg.

Unlike her, he had not received a doctor's care. Picking his way through the crowded bodies, Nate drew near enough to see the white crust over and around the wounds where someone had been forced to pack them with salt. He cringed, thinking of the terrible pain, and at the same time was grateful that Meg had been spared such cruel ministrations. It was Peter, all right, and sitting next to him with the lamp between two bare feet was a bare-chested boy. His own back showed the signs of a recent beating, but the wheals were scabbed over and his face no longer tight with fresh torment. As Nate approached he stiffened, hoisting up a crude bone knife.

"Who you? What you want?" he gasped. They were the same words the new foreman had spoken, but the tone was very different. Instead of irritation there was fear and a fierce protective note.

"I's Nate," he whispered, holding out his hands in a gesture of truce. He drew as near as he dared, right up to Peter's limp feet, and crouched slowly. "I's Mist' Bohannon's man. I come to see how Peter be. His woman worried sick."

"You come from Meg?" the boy asked. Nate nodded and the knife dropped four inches. "She awright? They whup her somethin' awful."

"She awright," Nate confirmed. "In a worl' of hurt, but she goin' heal. She concerned for her man, though. Look like he get the worst of it."

The boy nodded. "Massa say he got no right bringin' his whore over here," he said.

Nate stiffened. "You hush that mouth!" he snapped. "Meg ain't no whore: she his wife. They's married by a preacher 'n ev'ythin'! Don' you never say she a whore!"

"I didn' say it, Massa say it," the boy said miserably. The knife was on the ground now, and his limp hand with it. His scarred back was hunched with shame. "He call her a nigger bitch, too, an' he say if she b'longs to poor white trash she ain' got no business on his lan'."

Nate grated his teeth, but there was no use in taking these insults out of the boy's hide. "How you draw this duty?" he asked. "Dangerous business, settin' up with a beaten man out of favor with the massa."

"His Meg helped me," said the boy. "Me an' my Minervy. I's whupped on Sat'day night; Meg, she come Sunday an' she see, wash them sores an' she lef' apples fo' me an' our li'l girl. Mus' be that made them overseers come for her. My fault she been whupped."

"No." Nate thought of the thinly disguised loathing with which the planter had looked at Mister Cullen, and about the angry words they had exchanged in his hearing on the day after the hailstorm. "No, that ain' it. My massa an' yours be fightin'. Sutcliffe do this to get at Mist' Bohannon. Done it, too. What your name, boy?"

"Pait," he said. "I ain't…" He gestured at the slumbering mass of humanity. "I ain't one of these hands. Got me a wife an' chile. Well, she ain't my chile; she Minervy's. Mulatto. You know? But I loves her," he said with fierce pride. "I loves that girl like she my own flesh 'n blood. I's goin' make a good pa for her, raise her up right."

Nate thought of Lottie, who only ever saw her father on the rare occasions when he was able to slip away onto the Bohannon plantation and might never see him again now. He thought of how she turned to the men on the place – to Mister Cullen, to Elijah, to him – for the guidance and example she could not get from Peter. "That good," he said. "Chile needs her a man to look to. Needs her a man to love her when her own pa can'. Won't. You love that girl, hear me? You's lucky to have her."

Pait smiled, a tired smile that made him look far older than his years. He nodded at Peter. "You wan' me to wake him?"

It was on the tip of Nate's tongue to say no, but he reconsidered. Meg would feel better knowing he had actually spoken to Peter, and in Peter's place Nate would want a first-hand reassurance that Meg was being cared for properly. "Wake 'im," he said.

The boy leaned in, careful not to upset the lamp, and shook Peter's arm. "Peter? Peter? Wake up!"

The long, thickly-muscled body jerked, and the man bit down on a howl of pain. The three field hands nearest to him stirred, and one opened his eyes before rolling over and burying his face in his crude bed of straw. Pait hurriedly hushed the flayed man. "Peter, this here's Nate. Come from th' Bohannon place to see you."

Peter's right arm slipped down so that his face could be seen. He had been savagely beaten in addition to the whipping: his cheekbone was swollen and bruised blackly, and his left eye seemed to be puffed shut. His lips were split, and as he parted them Nate could see a tooth was missing from a fresh, bloody socket. "Nate?" he croaked, the word blurred so as to be almost beyond understanding. "Meg? Is she…"

"She goin' heal," Nate whispered consolingly. "Missus Bohannon, she fetched the doctor. The white doctor. He give her a liniment an' he bandage her up. She in good hands, but she worried 'bout you."

"I's awright," Peter mumbled, lying baldly but boldly. "You tell her I's awright. Ain't so bad. Only… only…" His one good eye rolled in its socket, encompassing what he could of his overcrowded new home.

"Only you ain't goin' be foreman no more," Nate said.

Peter tried to nod, but hissed in torment as the motion stretched the muscles of his upper back. "Shame," he said. "I's the bes' man fo' the job. They's goin' waste my talent pickin' cotton."

Nate forced a thin chuckle. The man was boasting of his prowess as a foreman, even after the flogging he had suffered. "I'll tell her," he said.

"An' tell her… tell her she ain't to come here no more," panted Peter. "Not never, ever again. Never."

"I wouldn' let her nohow," said Nate. "This here place no good for her."

"No good for no one," Peter whispered. His eye drifted closed. "No good for no one."

Pait put his hand on the man's ropey arm, and looked questioningly at Nate, but Nate shook his head. "Leave him be," he said. "I got what I come for. You do your bes' for him, boy. Meg'll thank you."

He stood up and turned, looking for a pathway through the maze of exhausted limbs. He could not bear this place any longer. The despair was too much for him. He wanted to go home.

_*discidium*_

Even after Meg's broken sobs died away and the house was once again quiet, Mary could not sleep. She had come to bed about midnight, when the last of the okra was pickled, and she had been drowsing shallowly until she heard the creak of the kitchen door and heavy footsteps below. For an awful span of time she had lain petrified in bed, listening to the noise of unfamiliar feet in her house in the darkness and wondering wildly whether it was some agent of Abel Sutcliffe's come to do more harm. But then she had heard murmured voices from the direction of Bethel's room, and she had recognized the low baritone belonging to Nate. When Meg began to weep Mary knew he must have brought news of Peter. She wanted to rise from bed and go to see what the tidings were, but she knew it was not her place to intrude. She could ask Bethel in the morning, but this moment, whatever it was, belonged to the slaves. They might work side by side, black and white; they might pine or prosper together; but they were somehow still separate, divided by lines of race and law and custom. There was no place for her in their pain, as there was no place for them in her anxious sleeplessness. She did not understand why. They had suffered through the awful day together: why could they not comfort one another?

Cullen's absence filled the bedroom. His pillow was cold beside her. The feather tick rode too high upon the ropes of the bedstead. The room was deathly quiet without the gentle rhythm of his breathing. The whole house felt vacant, as if it had been robbed of its heart. Mary lay flat upon her back, staring up at the black vault of the ceiling. She had spent nights alone in this bed before, but this was different. Cullen was not gone by choice or by the necessities of the plantation. He had not left of his own free will to call on a friend on the far end of the county or to transact their annual business in New Orleans. He had not even failed to come home after a night of drinking, as had happened once or twice in their early marriage. He had been taken forcibly from her, and he was locked in a cell in Meridian, and he could not come home to her however he might want to.

She hoped he was sleeping safely tonight. Mary had never seen the inside of a jail, but she had heard awful stories. Prisons were stinking pits of filth and violence and want. Of course a county jail was different than the stony edifice of Auburn Prison or the notorious state penitentiary at Sing Sing in New York, but Mary could not help but worry. Bethel's concern about the food had pricked at her, and she wondered whether he would be warm enough with only his topcoat. It was so cool tonight that she had closed the bedroom window at sunset for the first time since summer began. And even if his physical welfare was assured he was sure to be in a state of agitation and anxiety over the situation at home. He fretted perpetually enough when he was present; an enforced absence would be maddening for him.

Mary longed for the dawn to come. She knew that she ought to sleep, or she would be in no fit state to cope with the new day. She had important work to do, and the argument with Bethel alone would require her to be at her very best. Yet she was wakeful. This vast night with only cares and horrors to fill it left no room for slumber. Restlessly she flopped onto her side, careless of the fact that she dragged the bedclothes with her. What did it matter? Cullen was not there to need them. He had been taken from her.

Two wide eyes glittered in the darkness, and Mary very nearly let loose a scream of alarm. Then she realized that they were almost level with her own, and as intimately familiar to her as any eyes on earth. From the blackness broken only faintly by starlight in silvery orbs, a querulous little voice said; "Mama? I ain't sleepin'."

She lifted the edge of the sheet and opened her arms so that the small, nimble body could climb up into them and burrow cosily against her nightdress. "Come here, dearest," she murmured. "I'm not sleeping, either."


	42. Ain't Fittin'

_Note: This is the first chapter that's given me an opportunity to avail myself of the wealth of information at __www. csa-railroads. com__. Thank you, D. Bright. You are amazing._

**Chapter Forty-Two: Ain't Fittin'**

"No, you ain't." Bethel's voice was hard, but raised in a scandalized note as well. Lottie didn't mean to eavesdrop, but the old woman and Missus Mary were just in the next room, and the kitchen door was ajar. She bit down on her buttered biscuit, still a scrumptious treat even weeks after the last of the cornmeal had been eaten, and tried not to listen.

"I am," said Miss Mary quietly. "I have spoken to Elijah already, and it's been decided."

The sky beyond the kitchen windows was still dark. Elijah was out tending to the horses, and Lottie had to hurry and eat so she could relieve Nate in the tobacco barn. She didn't want to leave the house, but Ma said she must. Someone had to tend those fires, or there would be no tobacco to sell. All the enthusiasm Lottie had felt for this most important duty was gone: she only wanted to stay near her Ma, who was hurt and scared and skittish after a beating that Lottie still did not understand. No one had taken the time to explain to her _why_ the neighbor man had whipped her mother, or why doing so meant that he was able to take Mister Cullen away to prison. And no one had explained how it was that Mister Cullen, who had sheltered Lottie all her life, had failed so awfully to protect her ma.

"No. Nothin' been decided: you ain't goin' do it," Bethel insisted. "Ain't fittin', an' Mist' Cullen ain' goin' like it, neither."

Suddenly the biscuit had no more flavor than parched meal. Lottie grabbed her tin cup of milk and tried to wash down what was in her mouth. She had already finished her egg and her hominy and the stewed okra and beans, and she had been saving the biscuit for last. Now she looked at it, golden butter melting over the flaky inside, and she did not want it anymore. She wanted to go back into Bethel's cozy room beyond the parlor and sit with her ma. But she had to see to the fires. It was only about half an hour until dawn. The cows would be lowing, their udders swollen with milk. Nate had to go and look after them because Ma couldn't. She couldn't hardly totter over to squat at the chamber pot, not even with Bethel's strong arms to brace her. Bethel said it was on account of the blood she'd lost: she was dizzy and weak and she felt sick. She needed building up.

Lottie had heard Bethel and Missus Mary last night, too, when they thought she had been sleeping. Missus Mary had given Ma a glass of the red wine that her father had sent all the way from New York, and Bethel had objected that the wine was too fine for dosing sick folks: it was meant for Christmas supper. And Missus Mary had said that it was all the wine they had, and the doctor had told her Ma needed some each night before bed. Then Bethel had retorted that the doctor had said Ma ought to have meat, too, and they didn't have none of that, did they? After that Missus Mary had sounded very sad and worried.

"He may not like it," she was saying now, firmly; "but in his absence I must do as I see fit. The work in the tobacco cannot stop, Lottie is too young to do it, and you are need here to look after Meg. You'll take better care of her than I possibly can; you must know that."

Lottie cast one last look at the biscuit and tucked it into her apron pocket. The butter would soak into the cloth, but she didn't care. She might want to eat it later, and so she had to bring it with her. It was time to be getting out to the drying shed so that Nate could get on with his other work. She didn't know how he and Elijah were going to manage to do much in the fields, with two doing the work meant for four, but she supposed they'd have to find a way. If they had someone to hold the pole they could each pick, she thought: both working opposite rows in the same furrow as Nate and Mister Cullen had done right after the hailstorm when Mister Ainsley's men were helping. Lottie wished she could do it, that she could take her ma's place and help bring in the crop, but she was too small to reach the top of a long tobacco pole without tilting it, and too much tilting would wear on the leaves and maybe even tear them.

Bethel was still arguing with the mistress, repeating that whatever it was she intended to do Mister Cullen wouldn't like it. Lottie didn't like to hear them quarreling, even though Missus Mary still sounded calm and only so very, very firm and determined. They didn't quarrel, not in the usual way of things. The whole world had been upset yesterday morning, and it was still whirling wildly out of control. Lottie was frightened, and there was no one she could confide in. Bethel was terse and worried. Missus Mary was quiet and pale and trying so valiantly to be strong. Ma couldn't hardly talk with her lips swollen up and her throat hoarse from screaming, and she had troubles enough without Lottie's to add to it. And Mister Cullen was gone.

"… understand that it's contrary to convention," Missus Mary was saying; "but there isn't any other way."

"We need a boy on the place, that's what!" Bethel said. "Good strong, sensible houseboy we can trus' at times like this. Ain't no way to run a plantation, two old folks, one man and a woman and a girl-chile."

Lottie did not want to listen anymore. She wasn't a boy and she was no use for whatever it was they were talking about, but at least she could go and look after the fires. She tore open the back door and ran out into the grey predawn dark. Her bare feet whispered through the wet grass. The dew was cold this morning, and it nipped at her toes. Soon she would have to put on her stiff old shoes for the first and last few hours of the day when the air was chilled. She hurried past the henhouse, where the chickens were still scratching at the corn she had given them while Bethel served up her breakfast. They clucked and chattered with one another as if it was just another day and everything was as it ought to be. She wanted to reach in and grab them and shake them until they saw sense. Everything was wrong. The quiet life of the plantation had been turned upside-down. Hard work and simple worries had been replaced with desperate, overwhelming labor and impossible problems, all of a sudden.

Lottie remembered how Mama had come up to find her while she had been picking wildflowers on Sunday, feeling so grown-up and pretty in her new dress. Ma had looked pretty, too, and she'd looked so happy and eager to be going to visit Pa. Lottie wished now that she had tried to get her to stay home. She could have tried. She could have begged, or pretended to be poorly, or even thrown a loud fit like a small child. But she'd been eager for her day of leisure and not at all interested in having her mother around, and she hadn't done it. Lottie guessed that made it her fault, too, what had happened to Ma.

She had reached the tobacco barn. The newly-built boxes were stacked by the drying side, waiting to be filled. Those that had already been packed were stacked in the empty stalls in the stable, where they were safe from the rain. Mister Cullen insisted on sorting the cured leaves carefully, and he always marked each crate with a grease pencil so that he knew which lots were which. He said it made it easier when he was selling, and he got a better price because the buyers didn't need to waste their time and patience trying to tell which boxes were which. Elijah said that selling the tobacco was what Mister Cullen did best; even if he wasn't much good at growing it he knew how to get the best money for the product. Lottie wondered who would sell the tobacco this year, now that Mister Cullen was in jail.

Nate looked up quickly when she came into the kiln. His eyes were shadowed and he looked haggard with worry. "How your ma?" he asked at once.

Lottie didn't know how to answer this question. "Hurtin'," she said. "But I fetched up her other shif' from the cabin, an' Bethel helped her put it on. Said mebbe she be well 'nough to sit up an' eat a proper dinner." She gnawed her lower lip, wondering whether she should say more. Then hastily, before she could change her mind, she blurted out; "But the doct'r, he say she need red meat, an' we ain't got none to give her! How she goin' get well if she don' get what the doct'r say?"

"Red meat?" said Nate. "You mean beef?"

"Don' know," said Lottie. "Bethel jus' say red: chicken ain' no good."

Nate grunted and hefted the hammer in his hand. The box before him was nearly finished. He plucked up a nail and set it, driving it in with three swift strokes. Then he got to his feet and cupped his hand under Lottie's chin. "What 'bout you?" he asked. "How you copin' with all this?"

It was another impossible question. Lottie shrugged both shoulders and said nothing.

"You know your ma ain't done nothin' wrong?" Nate said softly.

Lottie nodded. Her eyes were burning. It was the smoke, she told herself. The smoke from the curing fires.

Nate shook his head. His eyes were sad and strangely numb. "She a good woman. She didn' deserve what happen to her."

She felt her lower lip tremble. "Why didn' Mist' Cullen stop it?" she cried. "Why he let that Mist' Sutcliffe whup her? He ain' s'posed to let folk whup his people!"

Nate looked very tired. "No. No, he ain'," he said heavily. "An' he wouldn' never have 'llowed it had he knowed; that certain. I don' think we can blame Mist' Cullen fo' this. He didn' look fo' it to happen."

"But he the massa," Lottie protested, bewildered in her hurt and trying so hard to understand. "Ain' it his job to look aft' his people?"

"Uh-huh." Nate nodded. "That ol' man done got the bes' of him, that all there is to it. You know Mist' Cullen an' I be brung up together, don' you?"

Lottie nodded, although she had never really thought about it before. She guessed Nate and Mister Cullen _were _pretty near the same age, and she knew they'd both been born on this land: Mister Cullen in the house, and Nate in the cabin she now shared with her mother. They must have played together, the way she played with Mister Gabe.

"Well, I know him," said Nate. "Know him better'n I thought, seems to me now. An' I can tell you he's hatin' hisself for failin' to be the massa your ma needed yest'day. That mos' likely all he doin': sittin' in that jail an' hatin' hisself an' tryin' to work out some way out this mess 'fore the tobacco spoilt an' we all starve."

Cold fear twisted Lottie's stomach. "It really that bad?" she asked breathlessly.

"Will be soon," said Nate. "Mist' Cullen done the figurin', not me, but back in springtime he say if we's goin' get by we needs fifty acres an' we needs 'em to be good. Ain't got no fifty acres no more, an' what we got goin' get worse the longer it sit. I can' pick it fast 'nough on my own, an' somebody got to hol' the pole so Elijah ain' pickin'. Don' know what to do. That the onlies' good thing 'bout b'longin' to another person: free men ain' got no one to tell 'em what they oughts to do, but you does. Mos' of the time, anyhow."

"'Cept when he in jail?" Lottie whispered.

"Jus' so," said Nate. "'Cept when he in jail." He stared vacantly into the middle distance for a moment, then shook himself like Jeb did when he came out of the creek. He looked down at Lottie and gripped her shoulder, and he sighed. "Don' you listen to me," he said. "I's a fool nigger, an' you got no call to be carryin' no grown folks' worries. The tobacco goin' be all right. Mist' Cullen, he goin' be back nex' week an' he goin' tell us what to do. He goin' have a plan: he allus got a plan."

He left her after that, and Lottie sat down to stir the embers, adding some wood chips to one fire and a thin quarter-log to another. She had to be brave and attend to her work. She looked up at the drooping, wrinkled leaves in their neat rows like a strange, grassy roof above her. This tobacco was good, anyhow, and it was her job to make sure it stayed good. The family was relying on her, and she couldn't let the fact she was scared and confused and full of heartache to keep her from doing what needed to be done. Everybody had to do what they could: like Missus Mary had said, there wasn't any other way.

_*discidium*_

At ten o'clock, Joe and two other deputies came and collected three of Cullen's cellmates. Several more were released from the neighboring cell, two of whom were clapped in irons before being led away. They were all bound for the Tuesday session before the Justice of the Peace. Cullen, Edwards, the Cracker boy, and the man on the bunk remained. For a while there was clamor and commotion up and down the corridor: cell doors creaking and slamming, prisoners protesting, a harsh wail from a frightened Negro away down the far end. The deputies gave stern orders and worn-out shoes shuffled on the stone floor. Once Cullen heard the unsettling click of a revolver being cocked, but it was not fired. Then finally there was silence again. In the cell across the way, one of the two men awaiting execution came to lean on the bars, arms dangling out into the narrow hallway. He looked Cullen over and grinned. His front teeth were rotted black, and their neighbors were missing.

"What you in for?" he asked. "Use the cheese fork to eat your oysters?"

"Naw, I killed a man," Cullen said sarcastically. He wished now that he had been wearing a work shirt when Sutcliffe and the sheriff had turned up: the fine cloth of his good clothes just invited heckling. "They got me in here with these others hoping I'll save the courts the trouble of trying them."

The boy, who had taken up the drunk's position by the bucket of drinking water, chortled throatily. "Go on and try it, Mister," he jibed.

Cullen retreated to the far corner of the cell where the two stone walls met. Pressing his aching back to the wall he lowered himself into a crouch to take some of the weight off of his tired legs. He was not sore enough yet to sit down. From the look of the floor, not all inmates were diligent about making use of the slop pail. He had thought that months of wallowing in mud and sweat and tobacco sap had cured him of any hint of fastidiousness, but apparently he was wrong.

"Me, I tried to rob a train," said the toothless man. "I tell you, it ain't as easy as it looks."

"Nobody gives a damn about yer train," Edwards mumbled. He was lying on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, one knee bent and the other leg swinging from it.

"Which line?" asked Cullen absently. He hadn't heard anything about a train robbery this year, not even a botched one. He figured the man had to be boasting of something he hadn't even attempted: buried though he was on the farm, that kind of crime was hard to miss.

"Mobile and Ohio," he answered. "Why?"

"Just wondering. Where'd you try and rob it?" He didn't know why he felt compelled to show the man up, but he did. He was in a quarrelsome mood, strained and hungry and short on sleep.

"Just outside Lauderdale. Had to get on at the station: couldn't work out how to stop the damned thing without bein' on it. Woulda managed all right, too, 'cept some farmer got word to the station the train had stalled, an' they came out with rifles. Bastards." He snorted back a mouthful of phlegm and spit between the bars.

"Out of Lauderdale headed north?" asked Cullen. This was actually a more interesting subject than he had first suspected.

"Yeah."

"That there's your first mistake. Ain't but five miles between Lauderdale and Tamola stations, and it's cultivated country," Cullen mused. It was a compelling academic exercise: how would he mount a successful a train heist? "Better to try it between Okatibbee and Enterprise, southbound. Nine miles between stations: stop her around the four mile marker where the woods come up near the track. The late train out of Meridian passes that way 'round suppertime: no one got cause to be out in the wild that time of day. 'Course they'll realize something's wrong when the train don't show up in Enterprise, but then they still got five miles to cover before they get to you. Two or three men could clear out a train in that amount of time, easy."

"Yeah?" The condemned prisoner seemed torn between skepticism and admiration. "How do you stop a train shootin' by at fifteen miles per hour?"

"Wagon on the tracks would do it," said Cullen. "Find a good straight stretch, at least three hundred yards, and put the wagon right at the end of it so the engineer got time to see it and stop. Don't even need to pull off a wheel to make it look broke down: all he'll be thinking is he don't want to hit it."

"You're assumin' I got a wagon," the man pointed out.

Cullen blinked ponderously at him. "You're talking 'bout robbing trains," he said slowly; "and you're confounded by the idea of stealing a wagon?"

The man made a noise of disgust and retreated towards the barred window behind him. His cellmate was tugging loose threads from the torn knee of his pants. Cullen rested his elbows on his knees and looked down at his hands. The streaks of tobacco tar were fading. Today was the third day since he'd last been in the field. It ought to have been a relief, but it wasn't. How were Nate and Elijah managing with only the two of them? The bottom field needed another going over, and badly.

The youth was watching him now, with a look of awed respect on his face. "Say Mister, what _is _you in for?" he asked. "You some kind of outlaw?"

Cullen looked up at him, grateful for the distraction from his anxious thoughts. He put on his best grin. "No, son, I'm a tobacco planter. How 'bout you? _You_ some kind of outlaw?"

The boy shook his head, suddenly flushed crimson. "Nope," he said. "Milked an old woman's cow."

"No crime in that," said Cullen.

"There is if she didn' ask me to do it," mumbled the boy. "And if I took away the milk and drunk it."

Cullen opened his mouth to ask whether the youth was alone in the world, but the ring of approaching boots stayed his tongue. Joe Dayton stopped at the door of the cell and unlocked it. He grinned at Cullen.

"You got a visitor," he said.

Cullen frowned. "Thought nobody was allowed to visit before noon," he said.

"I'll make an exception for this one," said Joe. "Come on: you can talk in the office."

This seemed strange, too, but he stood up and stepped out into the corridor. Joe locked the door carefully and took hold of Cullen's elbow. The grip was more for show than anything, and Cullen moved along beside his old schoolmate. The women's cell was empty now: apparently Madge had sobered up enough to be released. The two men rounded the corner and Joe ushered Cullen into the small front office. He stopped dead on the threshold. Seated in the deputy's chair with her hands folded neatly in her lap was Mary.

"What're you doing here?" Cullen said, aware too late that the words came out sounding harsh and perhaps even irate. He wasn't angry: he was astonished. He hoped she realized that.

Mary looked up at him, her eyes soft. "I came to consult with you," she said.

She was wearing her riding habit: the dark green wool coat and skirt, the dove-gray waistcoat, the creamy shirtfront and the broad-brimmed hat. Her gloves were the glossy leather ones that she only ever wore in the saddle. She had ridden, not driven. "Did you come on your own?" he asked. "All that way?"

She smiled. "You sound just like Bethel," she said. "It's only six miles, Cullen. Pike took it in forty minutes."

He let out a hoarse breath. At least she hadn't tried to ride Bonnie, but she must have been going at a mighty brisk trot to make the distance in forty minutes. He looked over his shoulder at Joe, who was leaning on the doorjamb and grinning. "You need to stand there and watch me?" he asked crossly.

"Guess not," said the deputy indolently. "Get a little farther in and I'll lock the door: that ought to be good enough. If you'll give me your word not to jump out the window?"

Cullen snorted. "I'm only in here on account of a misunderstanding," he said. "You think I'd be fool enough to bolt?"

"If you had anywhere to go, maybe," said Joe. "But a man with property and a family can't just run off, can he?"

"No, he can't," Cullen said. He took two steps into the room and watched impatiently as the other man closed the door. A key turned in the lock and he was alone with his wife. "Why are you here?" he asked hurriedly. "What's wrong? Is Sutcliffe making trouble for you?"

"No. Nothing's wrong, except that you're in here when you ought to be at home." Mary rose, the heavy skirt falling into rich folds. Her waist was trim and pretty above the peplum of the jacket, and Cullen wanted to curl his arm around it. But of course there were more urgent matters at hand.

"How's Meg?" he asked.

"Heartbroken," said Mary. "Doctor Whitehead says her back will heal, but she'll hardly look at me, Cullen. And Nate crept over to Hartwood last night—"

"Damned fool!" Cullen hissed. "Did he get caught? What did they do to him?"

Mary seized his arm as it tensed, her gentle fingers pressing consolingly into the crook of his elbow. "He didn't get caught. He spoke to Peter. It seems Mr. Sutcliffe has removed him as foreman as punishment for harboring a trespasser. They also whipped him quite mercilessly, so it seems."

Cullen had more or less expected this, and he didn't much care. What Sutcliffe did on his own plantation to his own slaves wasn't any of his business. He might revile it, but he had neither the power nor the moral authority to do anything about it. His concerns were for Meg. "But she'll heal," he said, almost pleading. "There ain't going to be no lasting damage?"

"She'll be scarred," said Mary quietly. "And I don't think she'll ever be the same. It's hurt her horribly, Cullen. She's lost something… I don't know. Trust. She's lost her trust in us."

He could not say anything to this. He had no idea what anyone possibly could. He wanted to tell Meg how sorry he was that he had failed her. He _would_ tell her, once he was out of this stinking place. But Mary was right. She likely would never be quite the same after this. A whipping took something out of a person. Sometimes Cullen thought that was what had changed Nate. He had seen the scar, just one long, thin scar across Nate's right shoulder blade. Sometime during those years when Cullen had been away at university, Nate had been flogged: for what Cullen still did not know. He had never asked.

"What about the tobacco?" he asked.

"Nate and Elijah are working the bottom field today," said Mary. "They know what needs to be done."

"Better than I do," Cullen agreed. He rubbed his palm against his beard and wrinkled his nose. Now that he was away from the reek of the cell his nostrils were awakening again, and he could smell the foul miasma that clung to him. He shrugged off Mary's hand and retreated to the other side of the small room, ashamed of the stink. "You came six miles just to tell me that?"

She shook her head. "I thought you might need this." From her reticule she brought the battered old pocketbook. "There's eleven dollars in gold, and a one-dollar bank note still left," she said. "Also sixty-two cents in small coin. I thought… for bail, or for counsel, or… I don't know. Have they set bail for you?"

"Fifty dollars," said Cullen.

Mary blanched. "_Fifty_?"

"Maximum allowable fine for the offence," he recited dully. He shrugged one shoulder and felt the ache of cold, disused muscles bewildered by the absence of heavy labor. "Guess I'm stuck here 'til it's my turn in court."

"A whole week?" Mary said. There was something far too like despair in her eyes now. "You can't sit here for a week."

"Got no choice," he said. "Sheriff declined to let me stand up on Friday. He'd rather have me up before Graham than George White. In his place I'd probably feel the same: George would be too inclined to take a rational view of the matter." An incongruity struck him. "How's there eleven dollars in gold?"

Mary flushed a little, abashed. "I took the dollar Jeremiah gave to Gabe," she said. "I thought if it was needed we could always pay him back once the tobacco money is in."

"I ain't using our boy's money," said Cullen. "You take it out of there right now, you hear me? He's going to want that money in a year or two: going to need a slate and pencil, a reader, an arithmetic book. Damn it, Mary!" He planted one hand on the stone sill of the window and leaned heavily upon it, helpless and befuddled. His mind kept leaping from one thing to the next without regard to logic. "I can't hardly think. Take that dollar back and put it away for him. Would you do that, please?"

"Of course. Of course, if that's what you think best," said Mary. She plucked a coin out of the pocketbook and tucked it back into the little drawstring purse at her wrist. All the while her eyes did not leave his face. "Cullen, have you slept at all?"

"How can I sleep?" he demanded. "This mess here… there's got to be a way out of it. I thought I had a way out of it. I don't know no more."

"Sit down," she said gently. She came and took him by the arm, guiding him over to Joe's chair. "You're white as a sheet. Sit down."

He sat, but only because he did not have the energy to resist her. His legs were unsteady and his hands shook. He rammed them into his pockets, hoping to conceal the fact. Dear God, he was tired! He had slept so poorly after his turn at the fires Sunday night, fretting about Meg's failure to show for her shift. Worrying for good reason, as it had turned out. How long since Mary had awakened him as he lay curled on Gabe's bed? It had to be more than forty hours, didn't it? Close to it, anyhow, and those forty hours crowded with more chaos and worry and catastrophe than should have filled a month. He wanted to sleep, wanted her comforting presence beside him while he slept, but he could have neither. Instead he drew in a deep breath. There was something he had meant to ask Mary, and now he couldn't remember what it was.

She had left his side and was rapping on the door now. There was a click in the lock, and Joe peered in. "Deputy, may I please have a cup of water?" Mary said courteously. Then she added with a demure little smile; "It was such a long ride: six whole miles!"

Cullen didn't hear Joe's answer: he was too busy marveling at his wife. Mary wanted the water for him, and she knew he wouldn't want to admit to any weakness in front of his jailor. She hadn't lied, either, but only allowed him to believe she was thirsty herself. Scarcely a minute passed and Joe was back, a tin cup in his hand. Mary thanked him and closed the door. This time there was no sound of a key in the lock.

"Here, drink this," she said, lifting his hand and wrapping it around the cup. The corner of his mouth twitched gratefully and he obeyed. The water in the cell was stale and tepid; this was clean and cool, fresh up from the well. He drained the vessel in one long draught and sighed.

"There was something I needed to ask you," he said. He tilted his head to look up at her. Her left hand was curled loosely, resting on its side upon his shoulder. Her right moved tenderly to smooth the whiskers on his upper lip. "Hanged if I can remember what."

"It will come to you," Mary promised serenely. "Can they really hold you here until next week? What about your right to a speedy trial?"

"Tried that argument already," Cullen grumbled.

"Is the docket on Friday full?" asked Mary. "They can't just hold you over out of spite."

"We ain't going to be able to prove it's spiteful," said Cullen. "Who the hell will listen?"

"What about legal counsel?" she tried. "A lawyer might know what—"

He sat bolt upright in the chair, so quickly that his head reeled. "That's it! That's what it was!" he exclaimed.

Mary, startled by this outburst, had jumped back half a pace. Her hand pressed against the front of her jacket. "What?" she gasped.

"That lawyer," he said urgently. "The one from Kemper County who danced with you at Boyd's party. What was his name?"

She blinked at him, not quite keeping pace with his manic reasoning. Impatiently, Cullen slapped his fingers against the heel of his hand in a beckoning gesture.

"His name, Mary. Do you remember his name?" he demanded.

"S-Secrest," she said breathlessly. There was anxiety in her eyes. "Mr. Secrest. Why?"

Secrest. Jim Secrest. That was it. Cullen twisted in the chair to look at the desk. Not seeing what he wanted, he pulled open the center drawer. There was a stack of writing paper within, and he took a sheet, spreading it across the blotter while he reached for the pen. He fumbled with the stopper of the inkwell, dipped the nib and began to write.

"I need you to send a telegram," he said as the black cursive spread across the top of the page almost of its own accord. "The telegraph office is down by the tracks. You tell him it's urgent, and you stand there while he sends it. I ain't goin' find a sympathetic lawyer 'round here, and at least I know Secrest takes his defense work seriously. He'll need to be here for the hearing first thing Tuesday morning: don't know what time they'll have me up before Graham. Means he's got to come down the night before: you'll need to put him up." He looked up and grinned at his wife. "Looks like you were right about leaving the straw tick on the guest bed."

Mary's lips curled into a tiny, relieved smile. "You do have a plan," she exhaled.

"Ain't much of one," said Cullen. "He might not consent to do it: I can't pay him 'til the tobacco's sold. And maybe I'm a fool to even try and argue the charge, but if I'm going up in front of Graham my only hope's a sound legal argument. We can't afford a fifty dollar fine, Mary, and they won't let me go home 'til I can pay it. I got to try and fight this. I got to try."

"I understand," she said, and silently he blessed her. He shook sand over the paper, held it out over the floor and blew. The grains flew off in a puff of air, and he handed the sheet to her.

"Go and send it now," he said. "Tell the telegraph operator to send any reply on to me here. Then you get on home, and stay there. Meg's needed in court Tuesday: I don't want anyone coming to town 'til then." He scrubbed at his beard and added; "You'd best come with her. I don't much want you to see me in the dock, but Meg's going to be frightened. Six miles is a long way to ride scared."

Mary nodded, but her eyes were clouded with unease. "Will you be all right?" she asked. "Is there anything else you need?"

Cullen didn't even consider the question: he shook his head reflexively. "Don't you worry about me," he instructed. "Go and get that sent. He's going to need time to think about it."

He hoisted himself out of the chair, his head swimming briefly. It was nothing to the dizziness of tobacco sickness, and he ignored it. Impulsively, forgetting the foul smell that clung to his hair and clothes, he kissed her. She reciprocated warmly, and he had to pull away before he could lean in to devour her. "You done the right thing in coming," he said; "but you need to get home now. The darkies need you to make 'em believe they can keep the place running with two of us useless. You can't show no doubt, Mary, you understand me? Slaves can smell doubt, and it spooks them."

For a moment her eyes hardened and her jaw tensed. Then she seemed almost to shake herself, and she pressed her lips together in tender concern. "You must sleep," she said. "You can't keep on without sleep."

"I will," he promised, though he did not believe it himself. "Go on, now."

She went to the door, folding the draft of the telegram as she did so. She paused with her hand on the knob, looking back at him. Her eyes traveled over his body, and he wondered what she saw. Then, almost as an afterthought, he snatched up the pocketbook from the edge of the desk and hurried to press it into her hand. "You're going to need this," he said. "Pay for the telegram up front, but try not to spend anything more. We ain't got much left."

"What about the money in the bank?" asked Mary.

"Fifteen dollars," said Cullen. "It's got to stay there if it possibly can. I'm going to need to raise a loan to ship the tobacco, and bankers don't like lending to folks who ain't got an account in good standing."

An anxious question alighted on her lips, but she brushed it away with the tip of her tongue and nodded her understanding. "Please," she murmured. "Please, Cullen, try to get some sleep."

Then she opened the door. There was a brief exchange of pleasantries with Joe Dayton, and then Mary was gone. The deputy led Cullen back to his cell, and though he tried again to close the barred hatch with care the ring of the metal resounded like a gong in Cullen's skull. He retreated again to the corner and crouched against the support of the walls, head bowed and breathing labored. It was one hell of a mess he was in, no doubt about that. And the worst of it was that everyone he loved was right there with him in the thick of it.

_*discidium*_

Mary unsaddled Pike herself and brushed him as carefully and thoroughly as she knew how. The patient horse submitted to her inexpert ministrations without complaint and settled happily into his stall to feed. Bonnie, clearly affronted that she had not been the one chosen for the outing, stamped her feet and snorted and was only reluctantly mollified by the thick slice of turnip Mary offered her in truce. She left the stall doors wide so that the horses could wander out into the paddock if they wished, and then went to do the same for the mules. Then she dragged the heavy front barn doors closed and leaned against them, ribs heaving against her corset. She had to compose herself before she went into the house. Bethel had put up such a protest against the idea of riding into town, and Mary could not go into the house looking the least bit ruffled if she ever wanted to hear the end of it.

The truth was that she was shaken. She had not expected Cullen to look tidy and pristine after a day and night in prison, but his appearance had still startled her. It was not the state of his clothes, which though somewhat rumpled were much as they had been when he donned them yesterday morning. It was not even the vile smell that seemed to cling to him and no doubt filled the air of his cell. It was the addled, roving look in his eyes and the agitated and unsteady rhythm of his motion. She wondered if he knew how wild and disordered his words sounded, or how the galloping cadence of his voice made him seem either mad or drunk. She knew it had to be the want of sleep that was taking its toll, and the strain of the past two days, but it frightened her all the same.

She had sent the telegram as he had instructed, without changing a word, but she wished he had not included within it the caveat that he could not make immediate payment. She knew that it was in her husband's nature to be perfectly forthright, and ordinarily that was nothing but admirable, but she feared that the attorney would be put off from taking his case because of it. Mr. Secrest had been a courteous dinner companion, and Cullen evidently thought highly of him, but he was at best a casual acquaintance. He had no incentive to travel the forty-two miles from Scooba to help them, particularly if his fee was to be deferred.

Mary's breath was level now, and she smoothed her expression and gathered up the trailing hem of her riding skirt. It was dusty from the road and flecked with straw from the barn floor, and she shook it vigorously to loosen the worst of the debris. A little untidiness after riding was to be expected, and she was less concerned about what Bethel might think than she was about trailing dirt into the house. As a girl she had never realized what a quantity of labor it took to keep a home clean and neat. Now that she shouldered a good share of that work herself, she appreciated any small effort to keep the outdoors where it belonged.

She stepped into the front hall and was greeted by a pounding of small feet down the stairs and an exclamation in a tone ordinarily reserved only for Cullen. "Mama!" Gabe cried, eager and gleeful and obviously enormously relieved. He paused on the third step from the bottom to sneeze, and then hurried down to his mother.

Mary bent so that he could climb into her arms, one practiced leg hooking around her hip. She straightened, hefting him with some effort. He was getting to be too big for her to carry like this. "Good morning, darling," she said. Looking up the stairs she could see his toy horses scattered on a step about halfway up. He had evidently been waiting there for one or the other of his parents to come home.

"I woked up an' you was gone," Gabe said, twining both arms around her neck and hugging her tightly. "Why you go 'way?"

"Didn't Bethel tell you?" Mary asked as she moved on towards the dining room.

"She say you gone ridin'," said Gabe. "Ridin' all by youself, all the way to town! Ain't fittin'," he added with a frown that was such a perfect imitation of Bethel that Mary almost felt she might one day be able to laugh again.

"I went to see Pappy," said Mary.

The little boy's whole body perked at this, and he looked over her shoulder at the open front door. "You brung him home? Where he at?" he asked.

She wished she hadn't said it. "Oh, dearest, I didn't bring him home. He has to stay in the jail until the judge says he may go," she tried to explain. "I went to talk to him and to see what he needed me to do to help him."

Gabe looked up at her. "You's goin' help him?"

"In every way I can," Mary promised. She had reached the dining room table now, and she stopped at Cullen's chair so that Gabe could slither down off her hip. He stood obediently on the seat, but his hands still clutched the broad revers of her riding jacket so that she could not escape him. She smoothed his curls with her palm and smiled gently for him. "You needn't worry about Pappy," she said. "He'll be home with us soon."

"How soon?" asked Gabe.

"A week," said Mary, praying it was true. Cullen's intimation that he might have to remain in prison until his fine was paid had frightened her terribly. With the telegram paid for they only had a little more than twenty-six dollars to their name, and that including Gabe's gold piece that she had been forbidden to use. If fifty dollars was the maximum fine, what was the minimum? There didn't seem to be much chance of Cullen escaping some measure of censure: he had, after all, allowed Meg to go at large. Mary shivered. She still could not quite believe that permitting a grown woman to walk less than a mile to visit her husband was an offence under the law.

Gabe was frowning. "Dat ain't so soon," he said mournfully. "I want my pappy home."

Mary hugged him tightly to her, the back of the chair digging into her hip as she did so. "We all do, dearest," she murmured. Then she pulled back and smiled for him. "But for the time being you're the man of the house," she said. "Once I get out of these clothes, you can come out with me to pick some beans. Would you like that?"

Gabe's mouth pursed thoughtfully, and his brows furrowed in a shrewd expression Mary recognized all too well: it was just the look that Cullen got when he was trying to strike a bargain. "Can Stewpot come?" he asked.

"Only if you don't let him nibble at the turnip greens," Mary said, more because he was expecting a counteroffer than because she was worried about the kitten doing any harm in the garden.

"I won'," Gabe pledged solemnly. His chest twitched as if with a hiccough, and he coughed shallowly. Apparently unconcerned he looked up at her and nodded very gravely. "I won'."

"Then Stewpot can come," Mary said. She glanced at the open door leading to what seemed like a very empty kitchen. "Where is Bethel?" she asked.

"She washin' Meg's back," said Gabe. "I ain't 'llowed to go in dere, Bet'l say." His scowl told Mary what he thought of this edict.

"That's only right," she said. "Meg needs peace and privacy so that she can get well again. You don't go in and trouble her, Gabe, do you hear me?"

"Yass'm," he said, bobbing his head. "I won'. I didn', neider. I minds Bet'l."

"Good boy." Mary kissed the crown of his head and then stepped back a little so that she could open her reticule. While in the telegraph office she had picked up the mail. She had left Cullen's newspapers, of which there were several, because he had explicitly told her not to spend anything more. She half-wished he hadn't: perhaps the papers would have given him some distraction and kept his mind off the worries that were so obviously gnawing at his reason. She realized now, far too late, that she could have brought him three or four of the _Harper's Monthly_ from the Christmas barrel if only she had thought of it. It couldn't be helped now.

From the little silk bag she brought out three letters: two from Jeremiah and one from her mother. They had all been sent postage paid, thankfully. It had always irritated Cullen that Jeremiah ordinarily sent letters at the expense of the recipient, and if his visit had cured him of that Mary was glad. She looked at the bundle of letters briefly, and then moved to set them on the sideboard. They could wait. There was not going to be any truly urgent information in them, and she had no time for the luxury of news from home now. The letters addressed in Jeremiah's hand had been sent from Philadelphia and Bangor: obviously the Tates were safely home in Maine. They were likely, Mary thought with a tiny pang of guilt, letters from Missy. She had promised to write her niece, but that too would have to wait.

"Come along," said Mary, giving Gabe her hand to steady him as he climbed down from his father's chair. "You can put away your horses and fetch Stewpot while I change, and then we can go out and pick those peas."

Gabe nodded, his reply lost in another little, dry cough. Mary's maternal anxieties flared just for a moment, and she calmed them. It was only a tickle in the throat: perhaps he was coming down with an autumn cold. But he was ruddy and hearty-looking, and clearly unaffected. There were so many other worries at hand that two small coughs scarcely even ranked upon the list. She would keep an eye on it, and if it got any worse she could have Bethel dose him with soothing syrup. Gabe adjusted his hold on her hand and marched happily beside her as she swept back into the entryway.

The letters, now forgotten, lay next to the carving utensils in a small patch of sunlight.


	43. An Unexpected Turn

**Chapter Forty-Three: An Unexpected Turn**

Cullen had promised Mary that he would try to sleep, but it was not nearly as simple as she seemed to think. After squatting a while, and pacing again, availing himself of the dubious convenience of the slop pail and taking a dipperful of stale water, Cullen at last surrendered to his exhausted legs and sat down in the corner. He first made an attempt to scrape away the worst of the muck with the side of his boot, but there was little he could do against days or weeks of accumulated filth. Resigned at last to the spoiling of his trousers, he eased himself onto the unyielding stone, leaning to rest his cheekbone against the outer wall. He closed his eyes and forced his mind to be silent and tried his very best to sleep. But exhausted though he was sleep would not come. He kept trying to shift to a less uncomfortable position, each time finding that he had left it behind instead. Then just as he started to dose despite the aches and the unpleasant pressure on hip and shoulder, those who had received sentences of whipping or imprisonment were brought back from the courthouse and there was general chaos for nearly an hour. After that it was time for those inmates who had subscribed to the service to receive their board. Cullen's nostrils, which he had thought were numbed completely by the stench of the jail, awakened to the smells of side meat and corn pone, and his stomach clenched and burbled ravenously. He tried to ignore it, and crossed his arms over his abdomen, turned his face to the wall again and made another effort to sleep.

He did finally slip into a shallow, uneasy slumber, rocking back and forth between unsettling dreams and the nightly noises of the prison. Bars rattled and the crude bunks creaked. Fists beat against thighs in a monotonous staccato, and someone wailed. Once he heard one of the Negroes singing, a low, slow, mournful song about crossing over the River Jordan. That roused him more completely than the weeping had done, because for one startling moment he believed himself at home in his little bed in the nursery, nine years old again and sick with the mumps while Bethel rubbed his back and sang to him. But Bethel wasn't here, and his throat wasn't swollen, and there were no warm quilts to cover him. It was raining. Far away thunder rumbled. It would be wet work tomorrow, picking tobacco in the mud, but he wouldn't be there for it. That thought brought all his cares crowding back, and for a long time he could not rest at all.

Then morning came, and those who had been sent back to the jail to be flogged were dragged out into the yard. Cullen's cellmates crowded to the window to watch, but he retreated to the bars and tried to close his ears against the whistle of the whip and the cries of the convicted slaves. Still he flinched with each blow that fell and could not keep himself from thinking of Meg, strung up in an outbuilding on Hartwood Plantation while Abel Sutcliffe brandished a bluejay before her naked back. The sentences seemed to take hours to carry out, and the crowd of onlookers that always seemed to gather on such occasions jeered and laughed and chatted as if gathered to a festival. But at last it was over, and the convicts returned to their masters, and silence fell over the jailhouse again.

That afternoon, Joe's little girl and his niece and nephew, kept indoors by the rain that was still pattering on the cobbles of the jail-yard, went charging up and down the long corridor between the cells. Cullen's head was aching, and he was more irritable than he would have felt possible, even given his situation. When Edwards started humming tunelessly it was all he could do to keep from marching across the cell and kicking him sharply in the tailbone.

It was as well he didn't, for Joe chose that moment to stroll down the hallway, artfully sidestepping his five-year-old girl as she tore past with an ululation of victory – having apparently triumphed in whatever contest the children were holding. Dayton stopped beside the cell door and leaned his elbows on the bars, looking thoughtfully at the prisoners. Cullen had been leaning under the window, biting down on his patience to keep it from deserting him entirely, but seeing his jailor he straightened.

"Doing the rounds?" he said dryly.

"More or less," said Joe. He frowned. "You sickening, Cullen?"

"What makes you say that?" Cullen snapped, instantly defensive. He was famished and he was dizzy and he had a headache, and besides all that he was just about ready to tear into someone, anyone, for no reason at all, but he sure as hell wasn't ill. Even if he had been his pride would have kept him from admitting it to one of Brannan's men.

Joe shrugged. "Doc's here to see you."

Cullen relaxed a little out of his combative stance. "And I can only see him outside of visiting hours if I'm sickening," he said, understanding.

"Well, I really didn't ought to make two exceptions in as many days, if you know what I mean," Joe drawled. "Sheriff _does_ know we're friendly: could be trouble for both of us if I looked to be favoring you." He studied his fingernails. "But the sheriff don't want prisoners taking sick, neither. If you gotta see the doc, you gotta see the doc."

"I gotta see the doc," said Cullen quickly. He didn't need to lie, either. "My head hurts something fierce, and I've been coming over giddy."

"That ain't good," said Joe lazily. He took the keys from his belt and opened the cell door, standing aside so Cullen could step out. He did not wait to be escorted this time, but strode off towards the office even before Joe could close the door again.

Doctor Whitehead was standing by the window, his bag and a covered basket on a corner of the desk. As Cullen entered he looked up and smiled. "How are you holding up, son?" he asked.

"About how you'd expect," Cullen said noncommittally. "You got news of my people?"

The older man shook his head. "I'm heading out that way in the morning: Miz Sutcliffe's taken poorly again. I'll stop by your place on my way back and see what Miss Mary might need. Give me a chance to check your girl, too; make sure she's healing up like she should."

Cullen curled his lip wryly. "So much for telling Sutcliffe to find a new doctor if he made more trouble for me," he said.

Doc's face crumpled unhappily. "Cullen, that woman's sick. Most likely dying. I can't punish her for her husband's cruelty. She's suffered enough being married to him. I'm sorry. I know I said I'm on your side here, and I am, but…"

"But you just couldn't do that," Cullen said softly. "It's all right, Doc: I never expected you to. I'm sorry to hear she's that bad. Not for that bastard's sake, but for hers and the girls'."

"Abel's taking it hard," said Doc Whitehead. Joe had caught up to Cullen at last and he quietly pulled the door closed to give the two men some privacy. "A lot harder than I would have expected. Don't be too hard on him, son."

Cullen snorted. "He whipped my woman raw and turned her over to the sheriff as a runaway when he knew damned well she weren't," he spat. "He paid off Brannan – or maybe just cajoled him, I don't know: they always been thick as two thieves – to trap me into admitting I let her go at large, which I didn't, Doc. I let her go to Hartwood because I knew she wanted to visit her man. I didn't give her permission to wander all 'round the county on a whim, and that weren't what she were doing, neither."

"Well, that's a good argument to make before the judge," Doc said. "You might make a point disputing the meaning of 'at large'. Just don't you say it in that tone of voice."

At this Cullen shook his head. He was not in the least agreeable today, and he would have argued with just about anything. "I ain't goin' stand up there and try no legal wrangling," he said. "I sent word to a lawyer friend to see if he'll come and speak for me. Let him do it."

The feathered brows knit together and Doc frowned. "How you going to pay a lawyer, son?" he asked quietly.

"Out of the tobacco money, if he'll consent to wait," said Cullen. "If he won't, I guess I ain't goin' have counsel. Still, I got to try it. Ain't got ready money to cover a fine, not if it's more than twenty dollars. And half of that's in the bank."

"I'll cover your fine, if it comes to that," said the doctor unhesitatingly. "You got to get out of here and back on your land."

Cullen was so startled at this sudden proffer of the very thing for which he had been dreading having to ask that for a moment he couldn't speak. He gawked at the man who had seen him through his childhood ills, brought his son into the world, seen Mary through her sickness, been like a father to him in a hundred small ways, and his chest constricted painfully. "Doc…" he croaked inarticulately, his head swinging from side to side of its own accord.

"Don't you try and argue with me," Whitehead said firmly. "We'll call it a loan, and you'll pay me when you can. Not when the tobacco money comes in: when you_ really _can, Cullen. And you never know: might not even need to do it anyhow, if that lawyer friend of yours knows his business." He cleared his throat and said with delicate hesitation; "Son, it ain't Melvin Morris, is it?"

"Hell, no!" said Cullen, almost laughing. No doubt that was just what the older man had intended. "I ain't fool enough to use any local lawyer, much less him. No, it's Jim Secrest out in Scooba. Maybe you met him at the Ainsley party?"

Doc shook his head. "I don't recollect," he said. He moved to the desk and whisked the napkin off the basket. An almost sickeningly tantalizing smell of fresh bread filled the small room, and Cullen's empty stomach lurched. "Ellie sent you some things. She figured they'd be feeding you on salt pork and corn pone, and she didn't want Bethel coming to hunt her down for failing to send a little treat when she's just up the road from you."

Unable to control himself, Cullen hurried over to look into the basket. There was a high, round white loaf, a little crock of blackberry preserves, a pat of butter and some snap peas. He only just kept from tearing into the food at once. Instead he smiled and swallowed a mouthful of thick saliva. "Tell her thanks, Doc. That's awful kind," he said. "I'll be sure and tell Bethel she done it."

"I asked about the basket, but you can't take it down to the cells," said Doc Whitehead. "You're welcome to the napkin, though, to wrap it all up in."

"I'll prob'ly ruin it," Cullen warned. "Ain't too clean back there."

"Go on and ruin it, then. I got more."

Doc spread the cloth on the desk and began piling the peas onto it. Unable to resist any longer, Cullen grabbed a plump-looking pod and bit into it. As the older man looked up in mild surprise he grinned around the half-severed vegetable.

"Mighty good," he said thickly. "Must be just about the last of your crop."

"Just about," said Doc. "Ellie put in too many this year: didn't figure on Theo being away. What she's going to do when Ben goes away I don't know. Smother me in food, most likely."

"Same thing happened when I went away," said Cullen. "Only Bethel was cooking too much, not planting too much. The darkies ate everything we growed: a lot more mouths to feed in those days."

"Yeah." Doc fell silent for a moment, transferring the last of the crisp green pods. "Better to carry the bread separate, I think. Don't want it getting damp: it'll molder on you."

Cullen doubted it would last long enough to molder. He certainly had no intention of letting it. He cracked the loaf and slipped the little square of butter into the breach, then tucked it under his arm. "Would you consider stopping in tomorrow?" he asked, a little hesitant. "Just to bring word how Mary's getting on?"

"Of course I will, son," Doc said kindly. "I know how hard it must be, sitting here when you're wanted at home."

The last of Cullen's frayed patience dissolved. "You'll pardon me for saying it, Doc, but the hell you do," he said harshly. "You never been fool enough to try and farm fifty acres of tobacco with three field hands and had one of 'em laid up in bed while you sit in a jail cell useless and what's left of your crop gets overgrown for want of pickers. You never had to wonder how you were going to get in the yams before the first frost when you can't spare a finger from working the cash crop, or how to plow for your winter wheat when the field's full up with rotting corn stalks. You got no idea how hard it is."

"Maybe not," Doc Whitehead admitted gently. His eyes were still patient, and so piercing with perception that Cullen wanted to turn away. He didn't. He faced him squarely and tried to close the shutters of his own heart as best he could instead. "But I do know how hard it is when you're worried that you can't do enough to help the folks you care about."

He clapped a hand on Cullen's shoulder, gripping it bracingly and yet somehow tenderly. Cullen, weary in the wake of his tirade, did not try to move away. He never would have admitted it to anyone, but it was a comfort to know he had Doc to stand beside him in his troubles. It was a hard burden to carry all on his own, even with Mary to encourage him. He needed a strong arm to catch him when he stumbled.

"I'd best let you go," he said finally, once he was sure he could stand to speak the words. "Folks could be trying to find you to see to sick kin."

Doc nodded. "Well. You just try and get plenty of rest," he said. "That's one good thing in all this: if you can't work, at least you can catch up on your sleep."

Cullen swallowed the sarcastic laughter that wanted to bubble up from his innards. He could have done with a rest, it was true, but this was not at all the sort of rest he needed. His body, still knotted with lingering tobacco-picking pains, was now riddled with soreness from standing too long on a hard stone floor, pacing like a caged animal, and trying to sleep while wedged sitting between two rough walls. His head, which should have been free of the grinding ache of tobacco sickness, throbbed with a fresh misery that he could not explain. And his mind was overrun with grim fretting of a sort he could not have imagined a week ago.

"Sure, Doc," he said. "I'll try it."

This time he was impatient, even eager to be back in the stinking, overcrowded little cell. The very second that Joe was out of sight, Cullen was back in the corner, cross-legged with his food in his lap. He tore off a strip of bread and bit into it savagely, scarcely even troubling to swallow. He paused long enough with the next mouthful to dip a corner into the preserves. Then, realizing that attempting to keep hold of the little pot would be more trouble than it was worth, he laid aside the bread entirely. Using his first two fingers as a makeshift spoon, he scooped up the dark, syrupy confection and ate it neat, devouring the whole half-cup and scraping the sides of the jar quite clean. By that time the edge of his hunger was dulled, and he finished the piece of bread more slowly. He chased it down with a few peas, and then forced himself to stop. This food had to last as long as it possibly could: he didn't know when he might have hope of more. He folded the napkin around its fresh green contents and tucked it inside his shirt. The loaf he settled on his knee, one hand spread protectively over it. Then, satiated at least for a little while, he did finally manage to sleep, leaning into the corner with his head lolling against the outer wall.

_*discidium*_

Bethel was bent over the open oven with a long wooden spoon, scooping drippings out of the pan to baste the roasting jackrabbits. Nate had brought them in at noontime, already skinned and cleaned and ready for dressing. The gamey fragrance of the meat filled the kitchen and made Mary's mouth water. She was still wondering at the field hand's ingenuity. He had laid traps yesterday, he had explained with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. Lottie had told him that the doctor said Meg needed meat, so he had got her meat. The rabbits had been lively, and he guessed there was enough for the whole household.

It had been a long day. Mary had been up in the middle of the night to watch the tobacco fires. The slaves had protested this, Bethel arguing that it wasn't fitting, and Elijah warning her that Cullen would not like it. Nate's sole argument had been that he could stand watch for two, and this was the only one Mary did not try to refute. She knew it was his pride talking, and that if the necessity arose he probably could. But he would suffer for it, and his work would suffer, too. No, she had declared in a firm tone that was unmistakably the voice of the mistress. They would keep to the three-watch schedule, and they would all just have to do without nights off until there was someone else to spell them. She had expected further dissention, but it had not come. Whether this was because they saw the soundness of her reasoning or because they had the habit of obedience, she did not know.

She was slicing parsnips into fine coins for frying and watching the twilight gather beyond the open back door, while Gabe played quietly under the kitchen table. The dry cough was still niggling at him, and now and then he snuffled. He was certainly coming down with a cold, and Mary hoped it would prove a mild one. For all Mary's worries about the Mississippi climate, Gabe had been vigorously healthy since his last case of the sniffles in April. She worried that if he fell ill now there would be no one to give him the care and attention he needed – not without neglecting other essential work around the plantation.

The wooden spoon hit the oven door with a dull _clang_ as Bethel straightened suddenly. A moment later it was lying on the top of the stove, abandoned as she hurried to the dining room door and placed a bracing hand on Meg's elbow. "What you doin' up?" she demanded anxiously. "An' dressed?"

Meg was indeed dressed: she had put on what was now her only frock, and had managed to don but not to tie her shoes. She was standing gingerly and there was a thin sheen of perspiration on her forehead, but her careworn face was set in determined lines. "I's jus' fine," she breathed, taking a careful step into the room. She was watching her skirts warily, lest they should snag on something and drag the garment against her bandaged back. "I's well 'nough to be up an' movin'. Anyplace bu' here, I'd been up yest'day at the lates'."

"You do look stronger today," Mary said encouragingly. It was true, but only comparatively. There was a greyish hue to Meg's dark skin, and her eyes were rimmed with red. The angry blotch in the left one gave her a haunted look. But her split lip was healing and her next step was steady. Still, at Mary's words she stiffened, her face turned suddenly and shyly away.

"Yes, Missus," she murmured. "I's stronger."

"Is your back still hurtin', Meg?" Gabe asked, scooting out from under the table to look up at her.

She smiled at him. "Nawsir, Mist' Gabe. Don' hurt so much no more."

"Is you still goin' live in Bet'l's room?" he queried.

"Hush, lovey," Mary breathed. She was trying to catch Meg's eye, but the black woman eluded her gaze.

"Lemme go, Bethel. I can stan'," she whispered.

Mary set down the paring knife and stood, the bench scraping a little as her calf pushed it back. "Meg, you don't need to be up until you're quite well," she said softly, rounding the table to approach her. "Neither Cullen nor I want you to strain yourself."

"Thankee, Missus, that right kin'," said Meg. "But I can' lie there one minute more. Ain't never had two whole days abed since my girl come: I's like to go out my min' in that li'l room."

"Well, then, you's can cut them parsnips an' give Missus Mary a res'," said Bethel stoutly. "Help me get th' supper on 'fore the men come in from them fiel's."

At last Meg raised her eyes, anxiously, and looked at Mary. "Lottie done tol' me you took my turn in the barn las' night, Missus," she said. "That ain' right. You oughts to have woke me."

"I took Cullen's turn," Mary said. "He wouldn't have wanted you to do it."

"Wouldn' wan' you doin' it, neither," muttered Bethel. "Ain' healthful fo' a lady, bein' out in the night air."

"Missus…" Meg's color deepened and she stared down at her feet. "Missus, I can' chop no parsnips fo' you, not now," she said.

"Of course not," Mary soothed. "You can sit and rest and keep us company. If you're feeling well enough tomorrow then perhaps you can do some light work in the kitchen."

"No'm," said Meg. "No'm, ain' that. I's goin' go milk the cows."

"Milk the cows?" Bethel exclaimed, so loudly that Gabe startled, bumping his head against the leg of the table. The heavy piece of furniture shuddered, but the child did not cry out. He just bit his lip and continued watching the three women, avid with curiosity. "You ain' strong 'nough to go milkin' cows!"

"I is," Meg said, and the set of her jaw was just as stubborn as that of the older woman. "I is strong 'nough, an' I's goin' do it. They like to be missin' me; five milkin' I missed, an' Nate done 'em Sunday like he do, makin' seven." Seeing no sign of capitulation in Bethel's eyes, she turned imploringly to Mary. "Missus, they's goin' think I lef' them. They don' never give so much fo' Nate as they do fo' me. An' with Flora come near her time, we's goin' need them other two givin' much as they can."

She was waiting for Mary to pass judgment on the matter, and so was Bethel. Mary's gaze shifted to the hard, dark eyes of the longtime matriarch, and Bethel shook her head from side to side in clear communication of her disapproval. But there was something in Meg's eyes that stirred Mary's heart. Beneath the raw, wounded look she had borne since the whipping there was another light: a fragile, anxious glimmer of need. She was pleading with Mary. Whether she longed to prove herself useful, or whether she was missing the animals to whom she gave such diligent care all year 'round Mary did not know, but the desperation was obvious.

"We'll go together," she said. "I don't want you carrying full milk pails yet: I can do that. And you can show me how to milk a cow."

Bethel opened her mouth in protest, but then saw Meg's expression of grateful relief. "Yass'm, Missus Mary," she said shyly, bobbing a curtsy made clumsy by her ravaged back. "Thankee; I didn' know how I was goin' tote them pails."

"Can you manage alone, Bethel?" Mary asked. "I know I'm not nearly finished."

"Go on, both of you," the old woman sighed. "Bu' don' neither of you strain youselves."

Mary moved towards the door, Meg following close upon her heels before Bethel could change her mind. Gabe got to his feet. "Can I come?" he asked. "_May _I come?"

"No!" Bethel said shortly. She swooped down, picked him up and set him down on the edge of the table. "You's goin' stay right here with me. The cowshed no place fo' li'l boys. That Flora goin' be ornery, close as her calf be. She might jus' kick you, an' how we goin' 'xplain that to your Pappy?"

Mary hurried outside before she could hear Gabe's inevitable question. It had only been a little more than two days, and already she could not bear to listen to her little boy begging to know when his father would be home. He seemed to think that the more often he asked it, the sooner it would come to pass, and it hurt her.

"This way, ma'am," Meg said unnecessarily, gesturing in the appropriate direction. Mary stepped off the stoop and started out, noticing unhappily how Meg walked four respectful steps behind her. They had never been close, for they saw so little of one another, but it still seemed that a fresh gulf now welled between them and it galled her. Still, there was nothing to do but walk on until they came to the pasture. The cows were on their picket lines where Nate had tied them that morning. Meg went to the first one and pressed her lips together, clearly working up the courage to bend.

Mary crouched swiftly, her skirts billowing around her, and seized the stake. It did not come out as easily as she had expected, but by gripping with both hands and twisting sharply she managed to pry it loose. The dark, sticky earth rained down from the spiked bottom, and as Mary rose, Meg took it hurriedly from her and slipped off the rope. She looked as though she wanted to speak, but she could not quite work up the courage. Offering her a little smile, Mary moved towards the next animal.

They led them down to the shed, Meg holding the rope of the heavily pregnant Flora while Mary led the other two. They were drowsy-eyed and docile enough, obviously eager to be milked. Inside the cowshed they were herded into their stalls, and Mary watched Meg to see how to tie off the leads on the heavy iron rings driven into the walls.

"You can give 'em their feed, Missus," Meg said quietly, pointing at the bin and pail. "Six scoops each."

While Mary did this, Meg slipped out of Flora's stall and took the milking pail to one of the other cows. She stroked her flank. "You allus got touch 'em 'fore you sit," said Meg as she dropped the stool and eased herself stiffly down upon it. She hitched up her skirt so that it did not tug. "Lets 'em know where you at, so's they don' get surprised an' kick you."

She dipped a rag into the cow's trough and wiped down the udders. The beast lowed loudly, and Mary had to force herself not to jump. Horses she knew well and understood. Cows were a different matter entirely. In New York, her family had had their milk and cream delivered every morning by a man driving a white cart. Here, she had always before fetched it from the springhouse, at one clear remove from the living, breathing source. She gave Flora her feed, and moved to watch Meg more closely.

She was petting the cow again, bringing her hand down the spotted belly and under to the udder. She took two teats, the left front and the right rear, and settled her hands firmly over them. Her fingers rippled, tightening one at a time, and two streams of warm, frothy milk fell into the bucket. They rang against the tin like chimes. "Firm bu' gentle, that the bes' way," Meg said. "Nate, I think he squeeze jus' a li'l too hard: makes 'em feel like they's in a hurry. Cows don' like t' be hurried."

There was a mewling from the door, and a kitten, likely one of Stewpot's brothers or sisters, came sauntering into the shed. It picked its way over the dirt floor, which was strewn with clean straw, and rubbed its slender body against Meg's leg. To Mary's wonder and secret joy, Meg actually laughed. For a moment the care and strain was gone from her face and she looked her old self again. "You speckled li'l rapscallion!" she chuckled. "You knows it milkin' time, awright!"

She tilted one of her fists and sent a warm stream of milk shooting over the rim of the bucket. The cat sprang forward, mouth open, to catch it. Meg turned back to her work, shaking her head ruefully. Mary, who had watched all this with wonder, found herself smiling broadly.

"What a clever little thing," she said.

Meg glanced up, her brows lifted in surprise. She had forgotten she was not alone. Hurriedly she looked back at the pail, once more avoiding Mary's eyes. "They's one in ev'ry litter get brave an' go explorin'," she murmured. "Ain' content jus' to sit with them other kittens an' catch the mice as wanders by. Thinks fo' hisself, don' do jus' what the others be doin'. Mos' times them ones finds their way here sooner or later."

"Most times?" asked Mary.

Meg shot her a sidelong look. "Sometimes the fox get 'em," she said. "Ain't no easy thing, goin' you' own way."

There was silence for a while, broken only by the cows' contented munching and the occasional bellow from the one by the wall, impatient for the relief of Meg's practiced hands. Flora, her underside heavy with her growing calf, was quiet. She did not need milking: they had been letting her go dry in preparation for the birth. Meg filled one pail and shifted her feet so that Mary could lift it out of her way, and then started on the second.

"Meg," Mary said at last, unable to bear the hush any longer. "Meg, what was done to you… I haven't had the chance to say how sorry I am."

"Yass'm," Meg said. She kept her eyes fixed on the udder, but Mary could tell she was not seeing it. "I know it."

"It should never have happened," Mary faltered. She had to speak, but she just did not know what to say. "You didn't deserve it."

"No'm. Folk mos' gener'ly don'," said Meg. "'Ceptin' mean niggers what beats on weak 'uns, an' maybe some as sets fire to things or tries stealin' the silver. Ones that ought be sol' off south or locked 'way. T'other ones, they don' deserve it. Not jus' fo' bein' sick or wore out, or sneakin' food 'cause their bellies is hurtin', or waitin' roun' to walk their woman home aft' Mist' Sutcliffe get done with her. Don' reckon I deserved it any more or less'n such folk do."

For a moment, Mary couldn't speak. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Waiting to walk their woman home after Mr. Sutcliffe… after what?"

Meg tried to shrug, hissed in unexpected pain, and inadvertently squeezed the teat in her left hand hard enough to make the cow shuffle her front hooves. Hurriedly Meg reached up to pet her, cooing apologetically. "There, girl. That my good girl. Hush now, I's sorry." She resumed the milking, stripping off the last drops before climbing to her feet. "Ain' no good talkin' 'bout it, Missus Mary," she said. "Talkin' ain' never done no one the leas' bit of good."

"Meg?" Mary said, moving to the end of the next stall. Her heart was fluttering. "Meg, what did you mean?"

Meg looked up at her, once more pleading silently with her eyes. The gloom was thick now, but there was enough light left for Mary to see that. "All I meant was I know I didn' deserve what I got," she said softly. "Mist' Cullen don' deserve what he got, neither. Nor do Mist' Sutcliffe. Ain' a one of us deserve what we got."

She reached to wipe the other cow's udder. "Bes' light the lantern, Missus," she said. "Gettin' too dark to see. The matches be on that beam nex' to it."

_*discidium*_

Now Gabe had taken sick.

Doctor Whitehead had reported that it was just a touch of a cold: a runny nose, a dry, occasional cough. But this assurance did not put Cullen's mind at rest in the least. His boy was sick, on top of everything else Mary had to cope with, and he was sitting here helpless and useless and altogether pointless. He hefted himself off the floor, trying ineffectually to dust the seat of his trousers. He had at last given in to the urge to lie down, too exhausted to care any longer, and after a night of tossing and turning on the ground he was filthy and no more rested than he would have been propped against the wall. He ran a hand through his hair, coming away with loose, matted strands, dirty straw, and clumps of indistinguishable muck. Shuddering, he wiped his hand on the trailing tail of his shirt. It had come untucked at some point during the uneasy night, and he had not bothered to straighten it. There wasn't any point. He would be trapped here another four days and nights, caged like badly-behaved dog and tormented by worries about home.

He was hungry again, too. He had eaten the last of Ellie's bread yesterday afternoon, unable to resist the urgings of his stomach. It was now past noon on Friday. If it hadn't been for Brannan's spite, he'd be in court right this minute waiting to say his piece. At least the cell was empty: the others had all gone off to have their chance at justice. Three more had been brought in over the last two days, again crowding the little space to capacity. One had been released shortly after breakfast once Joe Dayton determined he was sober enough to behave. The others, apparently, were entitled to swifter justice than Cullen himself.

He shuffled across the cell and eased himself down on the bare wooden shelf. It was a relief to be up off the floor, but it did not ease his agitation any. He leaned back so that his shoulder blades rested against the wall. Jail-pains were not as deep or pernicious as tobacco-pains, but they ate at the soul. Every little twinge reminded him that he had been sitting here, worthless to his family and his people, for four days now. And his son was sick. He closed his eyes against the sunlight invading the dreary room. It was thin, pale light, filtering through downy grey clouds. It would quite likely rain again tonight. The cotton planters would be frustrated. Good. He hoped Sutcliffe's head burst into flames with the strain of leaving the crop to stand again.

Cullen's mouth was dry, but he lacked the fortitude to bestir himself to fetch a drink of water. It seemed like he had been perishing of thirst the whole time he had been in here. Thirst and impatience. He had just about smacked Edwards last night, for whistling. The sound had gone through his head like an ice pick. He had cause enough to be short-tempered, but that didn't explain why he felt almost compelled to take it out on everyone around him.

He heard the sound of Joe's boots, but he didn't open his eyes. He didn't expect to have another visitor before Tuesday, not unless Doc Whitehead took a notion to come 'round to check on him again. Cullen hoped he wouldn't. He didn't want the man to see him like this: worn-out, disheveled, no doubt stinking like a privy. How he would get himself presentable for court he did not know. A clean vest and jacket might cover a multitude of ills, but he was a reeking mess.

His nostrils perked, drawn to a scent that penetrated the fog of oblivion they had raised in answer to the foul smells of the cell. He inhaled deeply, but it was no more than a wisp of a fragrance more enticing at that moment than anything else in the world. Not even hot, fresh bread, or sizzling beefsteak, or Bethel's fried chicken could have captured his interest or ignited his yearning more than that scent right there. He opened his eyes and his head snapped towards his left shoulder, his tired gaze focusing on Joe where he leaned against the bars, his pipe clamped in his lips. Again he let out a thin stream of smoke, and again Cullen could smell it.

"Here, gimme a puff of that," he said before he knew he intended to open his mouth. He slid off the edge of the bunk and hurried to the bars. "Let me have some."

"Please?" said Joe, stepping back and gripping the bowl protectively.

Now that he was standing nearer Cullen could almost taste it. He couldn't say why, but just then he wanted a drag on that pipe more than anything else in the world. His dully throbbing temples seemed to agree. Just a mouthful of smoke: that was what he needed to make him feel like a man again.

"Please," he said breathlessly. He had not begged for food. He had not begged for water. He had not asked for somewhere clean to lie, or for a blanket to guard him from the chill of October nights under the open window, or even for leniency to allow him to get home swiftly to his people. But if he had to, he was going to beg for a puff of that pipe. "Please, Joe, let me have a taste."

Joe chuckled and held out the pipe, turning it so the stem faced Cullen. He reached, his arm straining against the bars, and grabbed it, lifting it hurriedly to his lips. He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill his lungs, and then held his breath. It was cheap stuff, inferior even to his crop of last year. But it tasted sweet and savory upon his tongue and it warmed his chest and as he let out the slender ribbon between his lips he could feel his headache quieting. He sighed, then inhaled again, relishing it.

The deputy watched, clicking his tongue. "Hell, I never took you for much of a smoker," he said.

"I indulge now and then," Cullen mumbled, smoke spilling over his teeth. He took another deep breath through the pipe. The tobacco embers in the bowl blazed. "Damn it, that's good."

"Ain't really," said Joe. "Can't afford the good stuff this time of year. Waitin' for the crop to come in so the price'll drop. Then I'll get me a few ounces of prime tobacco and _really_ enjoy it."

Cullen wasn't really listening. He was clinging to the sensation of the smoke in his throat, his nostrils, the deepest recesses of his lungs. He had forgotten about his grumbling stomach and his sore rump. The headache was gone. He was thinking more clearly than he had in days. Even the tremors in his hands seemed to have stopped, or at least eased up considerably. He took the pipe from his lips and looked at it. How long since he'd last had a smoke? That night he and Tate had argued out by the paddock fence, he thought. He didn't smoke much in summertime anymore, except when social occasions called for it. Didn't feel the urge. But hell, he felt it now.

"You goin' give that back anytime soon?" Joe asked as Cullen took another long draught. "I didn't just come out here so you could commandeer my pipe, you know."

Cullen was abashed, embarrassed by his show of avarice, but not so ashamed of himself that he didn't take one last deep breath of smoke before handing the pipe back to its owner. "Why _did_ you come, then?"

"You got to come with me," said Joe. "You been called up."

"Called up where?" Cullen asked.

The other man laughed. "Court, o'course, where else? Justice White sent word: he's gonna be done early today, so if there's anyone waitin' for Tuesday's session he can take 'em now and save me the trouble of housin' them over the weekend. And that's just you. So come on and get your coat."

He unlocked the door, and for a moment Cullen could only stare at it. The pipe might have cleared his head, but this was a little too much to take in. "Court? Me?" he said. "But my counsel ain't here. My woman… she's back on the plantation. I thought…"

"Don't be such a damned fool!" Joe laughed. "Come on and hurry up, before he changes his mind. You _want_ to sit in here another four days?"

"No," Cullen said. He stepped over the threshold and Joe took hold of his arm, leading him down the corridor at a quick stride. He ducked into the office, leaving Cullen in the doorway, and grabbed his coat and waistcoat from the peg.

"Here, put 'em on," he said. "I'll walk you down myself." He leaned up the stairwell beside the door. "_Girls!_" he bellowed. "I'm goin' down to the courthouse! Somebody get down her and mind the place!"

There was a cantankerous but muffled reply and a sound of pounding feet. Cullen looked down at the garments in his hands, still bewildered. "Can I at least wash my face first?" he asked.

"No time!" Joe said cheerfully. "Bailiff will need to sign you in and sort out your details. You wanted to wash your face, you shouldn't have dallied about, smoking. Come on; hurry up; get movin'!"

He opened the front door of the jailhouse and shoved Cullen out into the street. He stumbled, managing to catch himself but not to make sense of what was happening. He fumbled with his vest, trying to get his arms into the right holes, as Joe hurried him up the street towards the stately brick edifice of judgment overlooking Meridian.


	44. Summary Justice

**Chapter Forty-Four: Summary Justice**

A clerk took Cullen's name, age, and place of residence, and conferred briefly with Joe Dayton concerning the charge. Then Cullen was led away to a room adjacent to the court, where those waiting to be called were gathered. There were eight of them in all: five white men, two Negroes and a woman. There were no benches, no bucket of drinking water, no conveniences of any kind: only eight bodies in an empty space covered with grimy, flaking whitewash. The woman was dressed neatly in a worn but clean calico frock, and two of the men had obviously not been incarcerated. Their faces were scrubbed and their hair and beards combed. One was lean, the other prosperous, and both were studiously keeping their eyes to themselves. The Negroes were pressed into a corner, shoulder to shoulder and watching the newcomer with wary eyes. Cullen scarcely glanced at them. He walked past the third man, disheveled and dirty but unfamiliar to him, and moved to stand next to the thin Cracker boy who had shared his cell.

"Ain't called you up yet?" he asked.

The boy had his hands tucked into the frayed sleeves of his shirt. He now wore a ragged wool vest that was missing all but its top button, but he had no coat. He shook his head. "Soon," he said. "Got to be soon."

"No cause to be nervous," Cullen said, wishing he could believe it himself. "You only stole some milk. It ain't a hanging offence."

"Maybe it ain't," said the boy; "but what'm I gonna do when they're done with me? Can't pay no fine. Can't even pay my board at the jail."

Cullen considered pointing out that in that case he should not have asked for it, but did not. The boy looked starved. Three meals a day was likely something he couldn't have turned down. "Ain't you got no folks?" he asked instead.

"Did. I runned off. Thought I'd find me work on the railroad, but all they want's great big men. Said I's too small even to put up a chimney." He looked down at his bare feet, wiggling his toes against the dusty floorboards. The knobs of his ankles stood out huge against his skinny legs.

Cullen watched him for a moment or two, thoughtful. "Why'd you run off?" he said at last. "Father beat you?"

"Not much," he said. "Didn't drink or nothin', neither. Works the riverfront in Vicksburg. I got sick of countin' cotton bales an' givin' orders to other people's darkies. They didn't never listen to me. Thought I'd see something of the country." He shrugged his bony shoulders. "Didn' get very far."

"Far enough," said Cullen. "Clear across the state. You want to keep going?"

"Dunno," said the boy. "Thought I wanted to see the ocean. Charleston Harbor. Richmond. Maybe even Washington. Places where things _happen_, you know? Now?" He hung his head. "Now I'd just settle for a plate of my ma's fried chicken."

The other man, the one who must have also come from the jail, laughed. "Ain't you a milksop!" he wheezed. In a nasal falsetto he mocked; "'I miss my ma's cookin'! I wan' go home!'"

"Shut your mouth," Cullen snapped. "A man's got a right to want what he wants, even if it is just a plate of fried chicken. Don't mind him, son. So you'd go back if you got the chance?"

The boy glanced at the other man, saw he was no longer looking in their direction, and nodded miserably. "Ma'd jus' 'bout die of shame if she knew where I was," he said. "Always been so proud there weren't no convicts on her side of the family."

"You ain't goin' to be a convict for stealing a pail of milk," said Cullen. "The judge'll give you a stern talking-to and maybe a fine. If you can't pay it he'll set you a short term in jail."

The boy looked up hopefully. "He will? How long?"

"Don't know," said Cullen. "I ain't a lawyer."

"Would he send me down longer if I done something worse?" the boy asked. There was a calculating look in his eyes that made Cullen uneasy. He was thinking about shelter from the rain and three meals a day provided by Mrs. Dayton. He wasn't considering the other side of it at all.

"That ain't a path you want to go down, son," Cullen said. "You take what the judge doles out, and then you get on and make something of your life, you hear? You miss your ma's cooking, go home. She's probably worried sick, and your pa'd just be happy to know you're safe. Don't you think that's so?"

The youth shook his head. "Can't go back," he said. "Got no work, got no money, it rains most nights now and I ain't got no shoes. It's a hundred and fifty miles back to Vicksburg, and I can't walk it barefoot."

It was on the tip of Cullen's tongue that the boy would be surprised what a body could do when it had to. At fifteens it had never even occurred to Cullen that he could work twelve to fourteen hours a day stooping in the tobacco and then sit up half the night building crates and tending curing fires, but he had done it and would soon, he hoped grimly, be doing it again. But the tired, pinched young face stopped him. What good would it do to tell him to try and walk it if he wanted home so badly? He hadn't been served well by the advice of his elders, or he wouldn't have ended up here. A boy with a family to go back to had no business stealing milk just to fight off starvation.

"So you get a job and you earn the money for rail fare," said Cullen. "You said you can count. You figure any?"

The boy shrugged. "I can do sums if they ain't too complicated," he said. "And I can read. Had me six years of schooling."

"That's more'n the deputy who keeps the jail got," said Cullen. "And he got himself a good job and a comfortable home and a family. Don't waste your time trying to get laboring work. Try shops, lumberyards, the eating house: places like that can always use a likely boy. Might not be interesting straight off, but it'll feed you and give you something to put by if you don't spend more'n you have to just to eat. In a couple months you'll have the money to get back home. Or if you're contented, stay, but don't you let yourself get locked up again. That ain't a life for any man."

The boy's color was high, but he nodded. "Yassir," he mumbled. He looked up hopefully. "You ain't lookin' to hire anyone, is you?"

Cullen shook his head. "Wish I could, son. I got more work than I can handle, but I ain't got money for wages."

The boy opened his mouth to say something more, but at that moment the door to the courtroom opened and the bailiff called; "Henry Jacobs?"

"That's me," the youth said, suddenly breathless. He cast an anxious glance at Cullen, who put on a small smile and nodded reassuringly. The boy hurried after the bailiff and the door closed again, and Cullen was left alone to fret about his own case.

The afternoon dragged on as one by one the others were taken up before the judge. Cullen stood until his heels burned with standing, then paced until his hips ached. Then he squatted in the corner by the door, and finally sat down with one knee tucked up and the other leg stretched before him. He tried to work out what he would say to George White; how he would explain what had happened and try to reason with the judge. He knew he could expect a fair hearing, but what concerned him was how the whole thing looked. If the charge was for letting Meg leave his land, he was guilty. If the charge was for letting her wander loose, he wasn't; but that didn't mean he couldn't be made to look it. At the very least, with the hearing pushed up so unexpectedly Abel Sutcliffe wouldn't be present to testify against him. That was something. Sheriff Brannan might be in the man's pocket, but he didn't have the spite that Sutcliffe possessed – or so Cullen devoutly hoped.

Finally he was the only person left in the room. His throat was dry and scratchy, and his exhaustion was catching up to him again. He hadn't had more than an hour of unbroken sleep since Sunday evening, and the headache that had been so neatly banished by Joe's pipe was creeping back again. He wasn't at his best at all.

He knew he didn't look it, either, and this thought got him to his feet. He tucked his shirttails into his trousers, straightened his vest and buttoned his coat. He raked his fingers through his hair, trying to make it lie neatly and picking away the worst of the straw and debris. There was nothing much he could do about his dirty hands, but he had Doc Whitehead's napkin in his pants pocket. He took it out, spit on a corner to wet it, and tried to scrub his face. Dark streaks of grime showed on the white cloth, but without a looking-glass he could not be certain he had got all of it. When a second corner came away almost clean, he wiped his hands as best he could and then folded the napkin and tucked it away. His battered work-boots and filthy trousers did little to help his appearance, but he could no more remedy that than he could rid himself of the stink of sweat, excrement and stale prison air.

The rain had started. He could hear it pattering on the slate roof, and see the streaks of water on the panes of the window high above. Where had all that rain been in September, when it was wanted? He wondered whether it was raining at home, too. The thought of Nate and Elijah toiling on in the wet, trying and failing to keep up the pace needed to bring in the last of the prime leaves turned Cullen's empty stomach. The rain might help the tops to mature a little more, but if there weren't enough hands to pick them that didn't matter at all.

"Cullen Bohannon," said the bailiff, startling him from that grim reflection. Cullen turned, scrubbing slick palms against the front of his coat. He scolded himself. He was no coward. Why was he so nervous about stepping out in front of young George White? Even if he was a Justice of the Peace, what was the worst he could do? At least in his court Cullen knew he'd have a chance to be heard.

The courtroom was in a state of disruption as those who had come to watch or testify at earlier hearings edged out of the gallery. The semiweekly sessions addressed not only misdemeanors and minor offences under the law, but property disputes and probate hearings and other civil matters. Cullen was shown to the defendant's box, a raised platform with a gate and a railing. There were iron rings affixed to the front to which shackles could be locked, for the room was also used for criminal trials. The benches reserved for a jury stood empty today: these petty matters were decided by judge alone.

Sheriff Brannan and the deputy who had accompanied him on the morning of Cullen's arrest were seated at the table reserved for the state's prosecution. Brannan felt the prisoner's eyes upon him and twisted in his seat, grinning lazily before leaning back in his chair. Cullen stepped up into the dock as the bailiff nudged him in the ribs, gripping the rail so that he did not fidget. He locked his left knee to brace himself, but kept the right loose. There was a tin pitcher on the table before the sheriff, weeping beads of condensation in the heat of the heretofore crowded courtroom. Cullen's tongue, rough and swollen with thirst, crept over his lower teeth towards his dry lips, and he forced himself to look away. He fixed his eyes on the bar instead, where the judge's seat was raised up above the rest of the court in the timeless tableau of majesty and justice.

George White sat alone, the seats on either side of him empty. The broad desk was strewn with papers: details of cases, notes from books of precedent, and other detritus. He had a pen and inkwell close at hand, and he was reading something the clerk of the court had just handed up to him. He glanced up at the defendant's dock in an idly curious manner, looked back at the paper for a moment, and then raised his eyes again as he recognized Cullen. A furrow of puzzlement appeared against his left eyebrow, and then smoothed into a look of placid disinterest. Judicial disinterest, thought Cullen with a breath of relief. He had been telling himself for days that George was a fair judge, and this only reinforced that perception. Given Abel Sutcliffe's influence in the county, and particularly with Justice Graham, Cullen knew he was lucky to have this sudden reprieve.

"Order!" called George, rapping with his knuckles on the polished wood. The throng of murmuring voices abated a little. "Order! Clear out or sit down: this court will come to order."

Those who were making their exodus scrambled to do so. The others hurriedly took their seats. From the corners of his eyes Cullen could see that the gallery was still a little better than half-full. His was surely one of the last hearings of the day, but the court was a source of great interest and entertainment for the public. Those who had an interest in one piece of business often tarried to see the rest of the cases, and some people came out just for the spectacle. The people of Lauderdale County took a lively, almost unhealthful interest in the affairs of their neighbors, and the court was an excellent place to collect gossip.

The bailiff stepped forward, announcing in a stentorian voice that echoed off the rafters; "The court will hear the case of The People v. Cullen Bohannon, for failure to exert appropriate control of a slave and for permitting said slave to go at large and not in the execution of any lawful business."

Cullen was swiftly sworn in, as was the sheriff. Then George consulted the stack of papers before him, shuffled them briefly and found the one he wanted. He frowned as he studied it, then looked up at Cullen and surveyed the court. "Where is the slave in question?" he asked.

"She has not been presented, Your Honor," the bailiff said.

"The prisoner was instructed to make arrangements to have her present," Sheriff Brannan said, standing up with one hand planted on his table. "I was real clear about that, Your Honor."

Cullen's temper flared. "I was told my case was to be heard Tuesday," he said. "I made arrangements for my wife to bring my woman into town then."

"I see," George said. "And where is she now, Mr. Bohannon?"

"At home," said Cullen. Surely this was obvious. He drew a thin breath through his nose. He had to remain calm, although his pulse was racing and Brannan's lazy smirk was not putting him at ease in the least. "She's back on my place. I was hauled out to court with two minutes' notice: no one gave me the chance to send for her."

"Did you ask for it?" inquired George mildly, glancing at another paper.

"No…" Cullen's heart hammered heavily. He hadn't known he had to ask for such a thing. No one had told him. It hadn't even occurred to him that he would still be expected to present Meg, with his case so abruptly pushed onto today's docket.

George hummed thoughtfully. "So the slave in question is on your property – your plantation property, I presume?"

"Ain't got no other property," said Cullen. His irritation rose and he added; "You know that."

"For the record of the court, it must be clarified," George said. There was nothing in his demeanor of the affable, uncertain young gentleman whom Cullen had helped in the matter of his gaming debts or advised in the matter of his labor troubles. He had the dignity of a practiced magistrate and the gravity of a Superior Court judge. "What distance from the court is your place of residence, at which the slave in question may be found?"

"Six miles," Cullen said. A thin trickle of perspiration was creeping under his collar and he forced his face to remain impassive. "Takes a little less than an hour to get out there at a comfortable pace."

"Mmm. And an hour back with the woman," mused George. "Well, we don't have time to wait now. It's a shame you did not think to send word the moment you were called up into court, Mr. Bohannon." Turning to the clerk he said; "Make a note that the defendant has failed to present the transgressing slave to the court as ordered, but that at the discretion of the court the hearing will continue regardless."

"Your Honor, I move that the court hold the defendant in contempt for his failure to carry out its instruction," said Brannan. "Mr. Bohannon was told, more than once, that he had a duty to make the Negress appear. When he requested to be detained in her place, I told him—"

A startled murmur rippled through the room, and set Cullen's teeth on edge. What did these fools think, that he had turned up from home looking as he did just to show disdain for the legal process? Obviously he had spent the last few days in prison: they could not be shocked at that. But of course Brannan had longed to make obvious the most irregular aspect of the case; not for the court of law, but for the court of public opinion.

"Order, please," said George. The spectators fell silent. There was a flash of white in the corner of Cullen's left eye, but he could not turn to follow it because to do so he would have to look towards Brannan. His resentment against the man was bubbling hotly, and if he was going to keep a rein on his temper he had best just keep his gaze fixed on the judge. "I do not deem it necessary to hold Mr. Bohannon in contempt for what appears to be the result of the confusion surrounding the unexpected expediency of the court," he said. "However, the clerk may note that some prejudice must be held for failing to make every attempt to secure the presence of the slave in question."

"Now wait just a minute!" Cullen burst out. "What the hell else could I have done?"

White fixed him with a very steady eye. "Mr. Bohannon, this is a court of gentlemen," he said. "I will thank you to attend to your language. In answer to your question, you could have asked the bailiff if word could be sent to your home that the woman should come to court at once."

"Could word have been sent?" asked Cullen, looking at the bailiff. He remembered too late that he was supposed to address his question to the judge, but George chose to overlook the direction of his gaze.

"I don't rightly know," he said. "Bailiff? Could word have been sent in the time the defendant was waiting?"

The bailiff shrugged. "Reckon it might've," he said; "but I don't see how we'd have got the woman back here in time."

"Nevertheless," said George as he turned back to the dock; "it was your responsibility to try, and so some prejudice must be noted in the record."

This was ridiculous, but Cullen did not protest. It would only make matters worse.

"How's the court supposed to ensure the slave's properly chastised?" demanded Brannan. "She's meant to be here so Your Honor can bring her to see the error of her ways and correct the moral deficit that encouraged her to put her master in this position in the first place."

Now Cullen's head whipped to the side, almost of its own accord. "Meg ain't got no moral deficit!" he snapped. "She's a good woman, and she didn't do nothing wrong! She asked me that morning if she could go over to Hartwood, and I told her she might!"

Brannan grinned, and George cleared his throat. "Mr. Bohannon, please address yourself to the court," he said. "Now, you say 'that morning' in reference to the morning of Sunday, the twenty-first of October, is that correct?"

"That's correct," said Cullen, forcing himself to take a steadying breath.

"Tell me what happened," said George.

"I was out in the tobacco barn with my boy, tending the fires," said Cullen. There was a rustle in the crowd at this, as people whispered amongst themselves in reaction to this affirmation of popular knowledge. "Meg came in to see me and said she was going to visit her Peter on Hartwood Plantation."

"That would be Meg, a Negro female aged twenty-nine, a resident of your plantation and your slave by right of inheritance?" George clarified, gesturing at the clerk.

"Right," said Cullen.

"And what did this slave say to you?"

"She asked if it was all right with me that she went. I told her it was, and reminded her that her husband was welcome to visit her on my land, too," said Cullen. "She told me he couldn't get away at this time of year, being a foreman, and that she was going to get along over there if I had no objection."

"And you had no objection," said George.

"None," Cullen confirmed. "Meg and Peter were married on my land twelve years ago, when my father was still master. A traveling preacher performed the ceremony. They been going back and forth between the two plantations ever since, chiefly on Sundays. They have a daughter; she's eleven now."

"That ain't relevant, Your Honor," protested the sheriff. "Slave marriages ain't binding under the law!"

George's lips pursed thinly. "This court don't need reminding what is binding under the law, Sheriff, thank you," he said. "Slave marriages got no legal standing, but they are well established in the traditions of the nation and therefore have some value in determining cases such as these. It is significant that the slave in question was visiting a Negro with whom she had contracted offspring." He nodded at Cullen. "Go on."

"That's it," said Cullen. "She went off to see him, and I didn't think no more about it until late that night, when I got up to take my turn at the fire and found Meg hadn't showed up for her watch. It weren't like her, but I thought…" He shook his head as a hot rush of self-loathing washed over him. He had actually believed that Meg had just got a little carried away in her lovemaking, while all the time she had been chained up in one of Sutcliffe's outbuildings, torn and bleeding and terrified.

"What about the apples?" said Brannan shrewdly.

Cullen frowned. "Apples?" he echoed. His mind couldn't light upon any memory of apples, but his recollection was not helped by the churning of his stomach or the sudden flood of saliva that filled his mouth at the thought of food. It was going on twenty-eight hours since he had last eaten.

Brannan's lip curled, and the deputy beside him snorted softly. The sheriff smiled up at the judge. "Your Honor, when I questioned the accused on the morning of the twenty-second, he claimed that he sent the woman with a gift of apples for his neighbor's foreman. Now it seems he has no memory of giving any such instruction."

Now Cullen remembered. He had said that, all right, but only because Sutcliffe had said he had the right to whip Meg because she was on his land without lawful business. It had been a half-cocked attempt by Cullen to deflect the blame onto the other planter. "I only said that 'cause you and Abel Sutcliffe had no right to whip my woman!" he snapped.

"So you lied?" said the sheriff. "To an officer of the law discharging his duty to protect the community from runaway niggers?" He gestured helplessly at Justice White. "Your Honor, you got to see the accused is not to be trusted. If he cannot be trusted in a moment of heated argument, he clearly cannot be trusted in court after having days to consider his testimony!"

"Are you calling me a liar?" Cullen hissed. "I've taken a lot from you this last week, Brannan, but I ain't goin' take that." He looked at George, hating the way he had to crane his neck to meet the younger man's eyes. It was demeaning – no doubt the intention. "It weren't a lie, exactly. Meg said she had apples for Peter, and I said it was all right if she took 'em, but to ask Bethel – that's my head woman – for some next time instead of saving 'em up out of her own food."

"So you did not send her with the apples for the foreman," said George; "but more accurately, you sent the apples with her."

"I s'pose," said Cullen, a trifle lost in the semantics.

"That is nothing more than a little imprecise phrasing, Sheriff," George declared. "In _a moment of heated argument_, as you call it, surely that is completely understandable. I do not believe it harms Mr. Bohannon's credibility in any way."

Encouraged by this, Cullen said; "They had no right to beat her. She was there on lawful business. Carrying freight, that's what he called it." He pointed at Brannan. "Said if she was carrying freight or bringing letters, fetching a doctor or—"

Brannan laughed. "Three apples for a Negro foreman? Hardly a matter of business."

Cullen's neck pivoted slowly, and he could feel his rage smoldering in his pupils. "How'd you know there was three apples?" he hissed.

And that's when he saw him, seated in the front row at the far corner of the gallery, pristine in his white suit with his hat on his knee, watching the entire spectacle with avid eyes and an indolent smile. Abel Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe, who should have been seven miles away to Meg's six, was sitting there in court although supposedly the case had only just been moved up the docket. Cullen's jaw slackened and his eyes grew wide. He could neither breathe nor move his head, and the only thing that he could think was that this was not right, not right at all. There was something going on here; somehow Sutcliffe had played upon the system once again and twisted it to his advantage and Cullen's detriment.

"The question of apples is irrelevant." George was speaking again, but Cullen could hardly hear him. The blood was ringing in his ears, and his ribs were heaving with impotent fury. "And we are not gathered to discuss a case of unlawful whipping. We are here to determine whether Mr. Bohannon did, on the twenty-first of October, permit his female slave to go at large in violation of the law of Mississippi. Now, Mr. Bohannon has admitted to giving the woman permission to leave his property that day. It falls to you, Sheriff, to prove that upon doing so she proceeded to go at large."

"She weren't supervised, were she?" said the Sheriff. "What else does 'at large' mean?"

"Generally under the law it is held to mean that a piece of human or animal property is permitted to wander under its own will and power, without adequate supervision from its owner or the owner's lawful proxy," said White.

"In that case, I'd like to have my witness testify," said Brannan. "Mr. Sutcliffe? If you'd please step down here."

With a courteous nod, the planter rose from his seat and approached the court. Cullen tracked him with wary eyes as he crossed to the stand from which witnesses testified. He gave his name and place of residence for the clerk, and was sworn into the court, and all the while Cullen studied him with the same watchful caution with which a hawk watches an eagle. Sutcliffe was a predator, but Cullen had talons too and if he saw the chance he intended to use them. If he saw the chance.

"Mr. Sutcliffe," George said when the rituals were concluded. "What is your part in all of this?"

"I am the owner of Hartwood Plantation, Your Honor," he drawled, his voice pleasant and courteous. It was a stark contrast to Cullen's own reluctant recounting of facts that were known to everyone in the court, and Cullen could not help wishing he had been a little less combative. "I also possess the slave known as Peter, whom the accused's errant woman claimed to be visiting in the capacity of broad wife. My overseers discovered her on my land on the date in question, and I detained her, believing her to have run away from her lawful master. I asked her to produce written proof of his permission to be off his land, and she could not do it."

"She'd been going back and forth for years!" cried Cullen, his thin control snapping. Intellectually he knew that this was what Sutcliffe wanted, but he could not help himself. The irrational, unreasonable unfairness of the situation gored his patience to the core. "Never, not once has she needed written permission!"

"I'll thank you to contain your outbursts, Mr. Bohannon, and allow the witness to speak," said George calmly, every inch a judge. "You will have your opportunity to defend yourself and your slave in due course. Mr. Sutcliffe. What did you do then?"

"It was late Sunday evening; I was called from my supper to attend to the trespasser," Sutcliffe said. "I do not expect my people to work on the Sabbath, not even… what was it, Bohannon? Tending fires? In the tobacco barn?"

"I keep the Sabbath the best I know how," Cullen growled. "For my slaves as well as myself. There's some work just can't stop, and you know it."

"Hmm. I don't recall seeing you in church this Sunday," said Sutcliffe silkily. Then turning back to the judge, he went on. "As it was the Lord's Day, I determined it was best to deal with the matter as I could at once, and then to detain the Negress until morning when the sheriff could be fetched. I therefore administered ten lashes, as the law allows any plantation owner to do when he apprehends a slave on his land without her owner's permission."

"She had my damned permission!" Cullen shouted. His fist came down on the rail of the box. That blinding frustration that came from the feeling that no one was listening to him welled up again.

George rapped on the table before him. "Mr. Bohannon, I won't remind you again," he said sternly. "Be quiet and let this man say his piece."

Seething but helpless, Cullen nodded tersely. After a moment, Sutcliffe continued.

"At dawn I sent one of my overseers to fetch the sheriff. He took the slave into his custody, and gave her some additional strokes as it is his duty to do for a runaway slave."

"She weren't a runaway," Cullen protested before he could bite his tongue. At George's look he wished that he had. "I'm sorry, Your Honor," he mumbled, surprising himself with the sudden show of humility.

"Once more, and I will have you removed from the court," George warned. His expression was stony and stern, but his voice very low. "Then I will have to decide the matter in your absence. You don't want that, Cullen. Be quiet." He turned to Sutcliffe. "If the woman was off her master's land with permission – written or not – she is not a runaway, Mr. Sutcliffe."

"Yes, so I now understand," said Sutcliffe. "However, at the time I did not know she had her master's permission. She had no proof of it. The sheriff and I acted in good faith."

Cullen couldn't say for certain about the sheriff, but Sutcliffe certainly had not. Whipped Meg's back to ribbons, in good faith? Another angry protest welled up, but he closed his throat and choked on it.

George was looking pensively at the sheet of paper in front of him. He dipped his pen and made a quick notation. "Have you anything to add to this case, aside from your testimony that it was you who found the woman, and that Mr. Bohannon later confirmed in your presence that she was off his land with his knowledge and consent, visiting her husband?" he asked.

Sutcliffe's slow smile sent a sickening fear through Cullen's viscera. He had seen that smile too many times before, and it always presaged something he had not anticipated and would be ill-equipped to fight in the heat of his first reaction.

"Yes, Your Honor," he said. "The Negress was not only visiting her husband. On her arrival in my slave quarters she stopped at the cabin of a field hand who had been punished the day before for failing to dedicate himself to his work. She conversed with his wife and then took over the tending of his injuries. She gave instructions to the daughter of the house, and proceeded to give my female slave advice on how to deport herself. In short, she was agitating discontent on my plantation."

This was the first that Cullen had heard of Meg stopping to help another slave – a slave, so it seemed, who had himself been whipped. It was like Meg to do such a thing; she was a kind-hearted woman. But it also cast the case in a very different and not at all favorable light. His instinctive protestation was quelled when George caught his eyes and shook his head tersely and almost imperceptibly. Recalling his warning only just in time, Cullen kept silent. His shoulders slumped and his head began to throb ferociously. If Sutcliffe had persuaded Brannan to bring a greater charge of agitation and breach of the peace, he and Meg were both in almost too much trouble to contemplate.

"We are not considering a charge of agitation," George said firmly. "We are considering whether the accused permitted his slave to go at large."

"Precisely," said Mr. Sutcliffe. "If Mr. Bohannon did indeed send his woman onto my land for the express purpose of visiting her husband, then he cannot truly be considered to have allowed her to go at large. My prior arrangement with Mr. Bohannon's father allowed the Negress access to my land for that purpose, to which I consented out of courtesy to my friend and neighbor in the hope that his woman might conceive and therefore provide him with additional slaves. In such a situation I was a proxy to the accused's father, and my own supervision and that of my overseers would be deemed adequate under the law to mitigate the charge that the woman was going at large."

George's lips parted a little as he listened to this. It was a cogent argument, and in it Cullen could recognize the very thing he had tried to express to Doc Whitehead. He had not possessed the presence of mind or the legal alacrity to phrase it so coolly, but it was just what he had meant. Unable to quite believe that Sutcliffe was making his case for him, he was therefore unsurprised when the man went on.

"_However_," he cooed; "if Mr. Bohannon gave her permission to leave his land, whereupon she meandered through my cotton and my sweet potato crop, examined some Negro infants, greeted an old man, wandered into a cottage and offered nursing services to a field hand, and gave advice – some might even say _instruction_ – to a young woman, left food with the family in question, then subsequently visited my foreman and, instead of copulating with him as was the intention of the original agreement, fell to discussing matters of labor, distribution of rations, and the general welfare of my slaves… if she did all this, Your Honor, then she was clearly wandering under her own will and power. If she did so without the direct supervision of Mr. Bohannon, then she was going at large, for I assure you she did not do so under _my _supervision, which extended only so far as allowing the mating act between her and my former foreman."

The courtroom was silent. Those among the spectators who had followed this were mulling it over. Those who lacked the education or intelligence were awed by the elegant legal phrasing. Brannan was nodding, and the bailiff had his hands clasped behind his back. The clerk's pen flew, recording the last few words, but it seemed scarcely to whisper over the page. George was studying Cullen pensively, but Cullen had eyes only for Abel Sutcliffe. His reflexive rage was held at bay by a bewilderment he resented but could not shake. Had Meg done all of these things? And if she had, how did Sutcliffe know about it? Someone must have informed on her. It was done; one darky would tattle upon another to curry some favor with the master. But it was contrary both to human nature and to the unwritten codes by which the slaves governed their own affairs in the small world of a plantation. If it was true, it was a terrible betrayal of trust. And it was disastrous to this case.

"Mr. Bohannon?"

He was tugged abruptly out of his thoughts by the pointed query of the judge. He shook himself, tearing his eyes from his wealthy neighbor. "Wha… I'm sorry, George, could you repeat that?" he said hoarsely.

"You will address me as Your Honor, or Justice White," George corrected placidly. "I asked whether you were aware that your woman had done these things after you gave her permission to leave your land."

"No," Cullen said. He glanced sidelong at Sutcliffe. "No, I didn't."

"Then you did not instruct her to do them?" asked George.

"Of course not!" Cullen was coming out of his shock now, and ascending into anger. "But if it happened, I can tell you right now it ain't like he's telling it! Examined some infants? You know what women are like: they'll always stop to look at a baby. And greeting an old man, that's just basic courtesy. And what's my Meg supposed to do if she sees some boy whipped raw, and this young woman trying to help him? She'll stop and help, of course, and give whatever advice she can. Older slaves always teach the younger ones: we rely on 'em to do it so the young folks know what's wanted of them. As for the rest of it… well, I don't know about the rest of it, but I'm damned sure Meg was only doing what she thought was right. I trust her judgment: she wouldn't do nothing untoward or subversive. She's a good woman."

George's brows knit together high above the bridge of his nose. Brannan's foot stamped with a sound that was uncannily like vindication. And an enormous smile spread across Sutcliffe's face. "There you have it, Your Honor," he said softly. "He trusts her judgment. He let her off his land to do _what she thought was right_. That's your verdict right there, clear as day."

"I'll thank you not to instruct this court, Mr. Sutcliffe," George said. There was a dazed look in his eyes as he tore them away from Cullen. "Please step down. Your further testimony is not required."

Sutcliffe rose and strolled from the stand. As he passed the dock he reached out to pat the back of Cullen's hand, which had a white-knuckled grip upon the rail. The muscles of his arm tensed with the urge to smack the man full across the face, but somehow his fingers would not release their desperate hold. With a condescending smirk, the older man passed by, leaving Cullen mute and immobile.

George dipped his pen again and scribbled several hasty lines. He inhaled very deeply and let out the breath slowly through his nostrils. "Cullen Bohannon," he said, enunciating carefully. "You have been charged with allowing your slave to go at large on Sunday, the twenty-first of October of this Year of Our Lord, 1860. By your own admission you gave the Negress Meg permission to leave your property on that date, assuming that she was going to Hartwood Plantation to visit her husband. You have also stated clearly that you trust this woman's judgement, implying that you permit her to make her own decisions both on your land and abroad – as it is clear from the witness's sworn testimony she did."

He folded his hands and squared his shoulders. His white silk stock rippled as he swallowed. "I am therefore left with no alternative but to find you guilty under the law of the State of Mississippi," he said. "Now that I have so ruled, the law requires me to impose a fine upon you in an amount not more than fifty dollars and not less than twenty. I do not feel that this case warrants the maximum penalty, as clearly you acted in good faith and not out of any desire to subvert the order of the county. However, you are held in prejudice for failing to make every effort to ensure the slave in question appeared as ordered, and I am also troubled by the clear implication that this is not the first such offence that you have committed. Therefore I am assigning a fine of thirty-five dollars, to be paid to the clerk of the court before your release from the custody of the county. This case is now resolved, and court is adjourned."

He got to his feet, and there was a scrambling all around to do likewise. Cullen, already standing, was scarcely aware of the commotion around him except to reflect that his must indeed have been the final case of the day. The bailiff took his arm and tugged him down out of the dock, and Sheriff Brannan winked at him. Blinded by helpless wrath and still struggling to wrap his mind around what had happened, he meekly allowed the bailiff to herd him out of the courtroom.


	45. The Long Way Home

**Chapter Forty-Five: The Long Way Home**

There was a small throng about the desk of the clerk assigned to take payment of fees and fines, but at least the office was at the front of the courthouse and so equipped with two large windows. Cullen slipped through the crowd of bodies and sat down upon the broad brick sill of one of these, leaning his shoulder against the casement and taking the weight off his smarting feet. The clamor of voices thundered in his aching head, and he wanted nothing more than to be out of here and on his way home, but of course he could not go. Lacking the will to jostle with the others he waited as each had his turn. When at last the room was quiet he finally bestirred himself and approached the desk.

"Bohannon?" the clerk asked.

"That's right," said Cullen. His voice grated shallowly. His throat was dry and he was bitterly thirsty. The thirst was almost the worst of it: worse than the aches and the exhaustion; worse than the sore head; almost but not quite worse than the humiliating and bewildering defeat he had suffered. It had all happened so quickly, and he still did not quite understand how it had all gone so vastly awry.

"Thirty-five dollars," read the man, consulting the paper bearing Cullen's name and details.

"I ain't got it, not on me," said Cullen. "I need to make arrangements."

"Nothing on here about arrangements," the clerk said. "Thirty-five dollars, payable before you're to be released from the custody of the county." He read a little further and frowned. "For permitting a slave to go at large? Whyn't they just arrest the slave?"

Cullen did not feel equal to offering this explanation. "There got to be some provision for a man to get money from home, or the bank," he said.

"If you're paying out of the bank I'm authorized to take a draft," said the clerk. "Are you literate, or do you need me to draw it up so you can make your mark?"

"Hell, do I really look that bad?" Cullen snorted. "I can write my own draft. Only I ain't got thirty-five dollars to draw against."

"You'll have to pay it cash, then," said the clerk. "Best send word home."

Cullen was about to ask how the hell he was supposed to do that if they wouldn't let him out of custody to hunt down an errand-boy when the door from the courtroom opened and George White came in. His stock was loosened and draped around the back of his neck, his hat was in his hand, and his greatcoat was slung over the opposite arm. He frowned ever so briefly and strode up to the desk. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"Nawsir, Your Honor," said the clerk. "Just seeing the last of them through. Looks like this one might be spending another night in jail while he waits for someone to bring money."

The young man's eyes shifted to Cullen, who fixed his gaze instead upon the sheet of paper the clerk was holding. "From home?" he asked.

"I got to make arrangements," said Cullen flatly. Doctor Whitehead's promise was foremost in his mind, but Doc had surely intended to be present at the hearing and to resolve the fine straight away. Loath though he was to be beholden to any man, Cullen did not know where else to turn. Every cent he had would not be enough to cover the fine, and he could not sit in prison while Mary tried to sell a hog or raise a loan to meet the balance. He had no choice but to avail himself of Doc's kindly offer, give him what little gold they had left, and hope there would be enough money from the sale of the tobacco to repay the balance promptly at the end of next month.

"Court order says he's to remain in custody 'til he pays," the clerk said. "Standard practice when a man's been jailed before the hearing."

"I'm aware of that," said George. "I made the provision myself. How long would it take you to make these arrangements, Cullen?"

"Don't know," he said. "An hour if I'm lucky. Maybe two."

"Go on then," said George. "You have until nightfall to report back to the jail." He gestured for silence before the clerk could argue and reached for the paper. "I'll leave this with Deputy Dayton. You can make payment directly to him as an agent of the county. If you can't pay by sundown, you'll be spending another night in a cell: I got no discretion there. If you can pay, you're free to get on back to your place and forget this ever happened."

Cullen supposed he ought to offer a humble thank-you for this consideration, but he could not bring himself to do it. How did they expect a man to get money together for his fine if he was locked away? He nodded tersely and started for the door.

George caught up to him in the entryway, catching hold of his coat sleeve. Cullen whirled, stiffening at the unexpected restraint, and the younger man's eyes widened. He did not quail, but he looked like he wanted to.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry," he breathed. "Cullen… Mr. Bohannon… the law didn't give me much leeway; you done it."

Suddenly Cullen's fury and frustration drained away, and he felt his tired shoulders slump. "Yeah, I done it," he said. "Whole damned mess is my fault. I never should have trusted that man." He shrugged off George's hand and forced his expression to soften a little. "I know you was only doing your duty. I'd rather have had you than Graham hearing my case."

"If I'd known you were on the docket, I would have moved you onto mine days ago," said George. "I'm sorry."

"Can you tell me one thing?" asked Cullen. "How'd Abel Sutcliffe convince you to move me up like that? All of a sudden, I mean, so I was flustered and unprepared and my counsellor wasn't here yet."

George paled. "You made arrangements for counsel?" he said. "I never thought… it's only a misdemeanor, Mr. Bohannon. Most folks don't trouble with getting an attorney."

"Yeah, well, I figured I needed one," Cullen said grimly. "Looks like I was right, too."

Now the young man looked miserable. "You should have said. I'd have had to stop proceedings."

"Sure," said Cullen; "and I would have sat in prison four more days waiting to get up in front of Graham. Likely wouldn'ta made no difference anyhow, 'cept with Meg here I couldn't have been held in prejudice."

"I had no choice in that, either," said George. "If you'd only asked someone to send word…"

Cullen waved him off. "Don't make much difference now," he said. "I got to go. Only got 'til sundown to scrape together thirty-five dollars. Can't spend another night in jail: I'm needed at home. Crop needs bringing in, and my boy's sick."

"Oh, no!" George exclaimed softly. "Is it serious? There's diphtheria out our way…"

"Just a cold, Doc says." Cullen shook his head wearily. "Still, it's one more thing for my Mary to fret over, and she's trying to keep the place running without me. I got to get home tonight. Guess that's one thing I can thank Sutcliffe for."

"He didn't have any hand in it," said George. "It's just what I try to do on a Friday if there's time. I don't like leaving men sitting in jail over Sunday if I don't have to. Same as you, most of 'em are needed at home."

Cullen's frown deepened. "Then how'd he know to be in town for the hearing?"

"I don't know," said George. "Unless he got word somehow that the docket was light and you were the only one in custody still waiting your turn."

Dark brows knit together and Cullen's cold rage seethed again. "Brannan," he muttered. "The two of them sure planned this all well."

George shifted uncomfortably. "You ain't saying the sheriff's dishonest?" he said.

That was exactly what Cullen was saying, but in a moment of clarity he realized it would not be prudent to lay down such a charge. He could not prove it, and coming as it did from one recently found guilty by the testimony of those two men it would sound downright malicious. If he had been less forthright about his own ill-advised decisions it might have looked different, but as it stood he would be a fool to say it.

"I'm saying him and Sutcliffe were eager to see me punished," he said. "You got to see this is one hell of an overreaction for letting a slave go visiting."

"I might disagree with the letter of the law, but I got to uphold it," said George. "I took an oath."

"Yes sir," Cullen agreed. "And you're just the sort of Justice the county needs. Don't you go thinking you done wrong, or that I'm angry with you. I'm just… I need to get home."

George nodded. "I'd pay the fine for you if I could," he whispered. "But…"

"But you're the judge," said Cullen. "You can't: I know it. I got the means. I just need to go and fetch the money." He moved to the high arched doors and paused with his hand on the knob. "Say, what about them troubles you had with your slaves? You ever work things out?"

The young face lit up in a sudden smile. "Hell, I ain't had a lick of trouble since I did what you said," he declared. "Worked better'n I ever hoped. You ever in need of work, I'd hire you for an overseer in a minute!"

He was joking, of course: overseers were social inferiors, and no man of the planter class would take such work. But Cullen, already occupied with labors far below anything considered fitting for the station to which he had been born, did not find it amusing at all. He wondered bleakly how soon he would be desperate enough to seriously consider working another man's darkies for thirty dollars a month.

"Glad to know I could be of help," he said. "Take care of yourself, George. And I thank you for the sound judgment. Another man might have tried to bring a charge of agitating against my woman."

George's smile faded and he shook his head faintly. "I know that ain't how it was. But you got to be more careful, Cullen. Not just in what you do, but in what you say. It hurt you in there."

"I know," Cullen muttered. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

_*discidium*_

Meg stood stiffly, her feet planted wide in the mud and the butt of the tobacco pole resting on the toe of her shoe. The broad palmetto hat kept the rain off of her face, but her skirts were soaked from constant brushing against the plants. The last of the prime leaves were picked from the bottom field; the whole, undamaged leaves that might still fetch top price at market. Now Nate and Elijah were working the middle field. Some of these leaves were almost as good, and others were torn and ragged from the hail that had beaten down on the west side of the rows. The two men were cramped, working in the same furrow on opposite rows, but at least they were both picking again.

Meg's shoulders ached and her back stung under the weight of Bethel's warm woolen shawl. Summer was over, all right, and the rain was cold and penetrating. Nate and Elijah were sniffling as they worked, their soaked clothes chilling them so their noses ran. They would ruin their coats if they wore them in the tobacco, and everyone knew – though no one said – that there would be no hope of new clothes this year. Boots, maybe, if Mister Cullen scrimped on the luxuries that were necessities for a planter's family, but not clothes. Meg, now left with only one dress, wondered how any of them would manage to make their garments last another year. Even the mistress's everyday dresses looked tired and shabby now, and she had always dressed so smartly.

It was easier to worry about things like clothes, and the crop, and even the winter stores, because it kept Meg from thinking about what had happened. What had been done to her. She knew she was fortunate. At the hands of that man, it might have been so much worse – so much more unthinkable. He had not violated her, as she had feared he would in those first horrible minutes when the overseers were ripping her dress from her body. But the way he had looked at her and the things he had said, the awful things he had said, still haunted her. She could still feel his hand, cold as a fish and smooth as a lady's, cupping her breast to feel its weight, and the thought made her shiver. She reached for the leaf Elijah was holding out to her, and focused intently upon every detail of its veins as she threaded it onto the pole.

She was ashamed, so ashamed, and the shame was worse than the pain had been. Never once in her life had she done anything deserving of a whipping; nothing even that would have been considered grounds on a plantation with stricter masters or cruel overseers. She had always been diligent and obedient, careful in her work and respectful in her words and her thoughts. She had been raised up to be a good nigger under old Mr. Bohannon, and she had taught her daughter the same. And she, who had never even been scolded by Mister Cullen, had been stripped naked like an animal, and strung up by the wrists so she could not cover herself, and whipped so the blood and the tears flowed together. The welts, healing beneath Bethel's careful bandaging, now smarted and itched more than they burned in agony, but the humiliation was fresh and raw. She could not long endure the gaze of those she cared about, for although Bethel and Nate and Elijah and even Missus Mary had been nothing but kind and caring Meg could not shake the irrational fear that they knew the depth of her shame.

She took a step forward as the men moved on to the next two plants. They worked swiftly and deftly with the small knives, neither letting his misery and exhaustion show. She knew it must be so hard, so painful for Elijah to stoop like that, and though Nate was young and strong he was not immune to the agony in the back. Meg knew she could not possibly maintain such a motion herself: it would tear the scabs off the healing wheals and she would be laid up in bed again, useless. She had to avoid that at all costs. She was needed here. The work could not stop.

"Mist' Cullen say anything to you, Nate?" asked Elijah, his voice muffled by the leaves and the rain but still strangely loud after the long silence in which they had been laboring.

"How that?" Nate grunted.

"When you talk to him at the jail. He say anything 'bout them yams?"

Meg's stomach grumbled. Missus Mary had brought them food at four o'clock – eggs and buttered bread, okra and cold succotash and apples – and she wasn't truly hungry, but she was craving yams. Everyone was. They were all waiting for the crop to be in so they could once more enjoy that cornerstone of their diet. Yams were a comfort to an empty stomach, and they were the taste of security: the taste of food laid by in the cellar against winter's hunger.

"No," said Nate. "Just worryin' 'bout this-here tobacco. Said we gots to keep up with it."

"We's doin' our bes'." Elijah looked down the field at the rows still waiting for this pass through the crop. They had lost time in the four days when Meg could not stand upright long enough to hold the pole, and there had been only one picker. The leaves were ripening all the while, and they still had to bring in the tops after this. "But them yams got to start comin' up soon. Got to get 'em in 'fore the firs' frost."

"Massa be back Tuesday, he say," Nate said. "He kin decide then what he wan' do."

"Tuesday the month be pretty near over," argued Elijah. "Frost mos' gen'rally come 'fore November tenth: that two weeks tomorrow. Goin' take us six days easy to get up them yams, 'specially does some of us still need to be out here."

"Ain' my place to decide what work we do," said Nate tiredly. "Massa say the tobacco got keep comin' in. You know we got to get the bes' we can for sellin'."

"What more important?" Elijah asked. "Tobacco for sellin', or yams for eatin'?"

"They's both important," Meg said quietly. "Tobacco money goin' buy flour an' cornmeal, oats for the horses, syrup an' sugar an' all them things we can't make ourselves. Mist' Cullen got pay his debts an' the taxes, too. He don' pay the taxes, the gov'ment goin' take this here lan', an' then where we goin' plant nex' year's yams?"

Nate stared up at her, eyes wide. It seemed he had not thought of this. Elijah shook his head. "That so," he said. "But that why we gots to get them yams in. Ain't goin' be no extra money if the food run low. Eight hungry mouths to feed. Ain't our place to decide, but someone got to. Missus can't: what she know 'bout farmin'? Massa ain't goin' be home 'til Tuesday, mos' likely late. That three workin' days los' if we don' choose right."

"What we goin' do?" asked Meg, watching the old man's eyes in an attempt to gauge how worried he truly was. She was about sick with anxiety herself, but if Elijah remained calm she could bear it.

"Ain't got but another half-hour 'til sunset, an' the light ain't goin' last with these clouds." He drew his soaked sleeve across his brow to wick away the worst of the rainwater. "No use decidin' anything today. I'll speak to Bethel. Maybe she know what Mist' Cullen would want."

Meg adjusted her hold on the pole as she slipped on another leaf. She could feel something warm trickling down her left flank, and she wondered whether it was rainwater or blood. It didn't matter. The work had to be done. It was her fault Mister Cullen wasn't here: he had taken her place so she could heal. He would have been more use in the fields than she, even if she hadn't been flogged. She had to keep working just as long as she could.

_*discidium*_

Doctor Whitehead lived in a two-storey stucco house with a broad, well-tended lawn in front and a large kitchen garden behind. It was down the hill from the courthouse, and so Cullen made good time even on his aching legs. It was remarkable what four days on stone could do to the joints of his hips and knees, after months of standing out in soft earth and mud. He supposed it was another sign that his boots were worn out, that they couldn't cushion his stance any longer. He had his hands in the pockets of his frock coat, and his head bowed against the rain. It was a steady, soaking autumn rain that quickly stopped rolling off of his shoulders and began to seep into the wool. His hair was in straggles in less than a minute, and he wished that either he or Mary had thought to grab his hat in the chaos of Monday morning. Not only would it have offered some protection from the weather, but he felt oddly naked without it, walking bareheaded through Meridian. A gentleman was not a gentleman without his hat: how often had Bethel drilled that into him as a child?

He came to the pretty picket gate in the doctor's low hedge, and stooped to lift the latch. Stooping at least was easier than it had been in months. He almost smiled at the irony. He had longed for something, anything, to spare him just for a while from the drudgery of the tobacco field, and when it had finally come he had spent the entire four days wishing anxiously to be back.

On the veranda and so out of the rain, he raked a hand through his hair to scrape it off his face, tried to smooth the front of his coat, and lifted his expression out of its drawn lines. He squared his shoulders and knocked lightly upon the door.

No answer was immediately forthcoming. The small stable behind the house was shut up against the rain. Doc did not keep his horses in livery, but had an arrangement with the neighbor that secured the services of the young darky groom to attend them as required. Cullen had often wondered whether the boy in question liked this addition to his duties. Ellie was the sort to lay aside a biscuit or a bite of pie for an eager youth, as Cullen knew from his own boyhood, but on the other hand the doctor was often abroad at all hours, and his horse would need rubbing down whenever he chanced to return from such errands.

Cullen knocked again, and this time heard spry footsteps from the other side of the door. It opened like a shot, and Ben was grinning up at him. "Mr. Bohannon!" he exclaimed happily. "Come in, come in. What're you doin' here? Pappy said you was in prison; some sort of a misunderstanding over a slave?"

There was no way to explain, and nothing much more to say about the matter anyhow. Cullen nodded shortly. "Had my hearing just now," he said. "Is the doc in, son? I need to talk to him."

"Gee, no," said Ben. "He just got fetched out of here by a pair of ragged kids. Seems some woman down in the shanties got a baby on the way, and it ain't coming like it should. Toes where the head oughta be."

Only a doctor's boy would speak so frankly about these matters, and at any other time Cullen might have been both amused and a little embarrassed to hear it. Now, however, all he could think with quiet despair was that a breach birth was no quick errand. He could not expect the doctor back before nightfall, nor could he go down to the tents and shanties on the edge of town and start knocking on windows asking where to find the woman with the baby coming. He wouldn't want to trouble Doc Whitehead while he was working, anyhow; particularly not on a case that could turn so quickly fatal.

"I see," he said. "That's all right, then. I'll be going."

"Don't go!" said Ben, seizing Cullen's arm and dragging him over the threshold so that he could close the door. "Come have a drink. Ellie's already started on supper: there'll be no one else to eat it but me. _Ellie! _Mr. Bohannon's here!"

Cullen shook his head, trying to get his limb back out of the boy's clutches. As badly as he wanted a drink, and as desperate as he was for a real meal, he could not stay. If Doc wasn't around he would have to try some other means to raise the money. It was past closing time at the bank, so mustering a loan there was out, but he might be able to convince Mr. Townsend to advance him the money for a few days, just until he could withdraw his slender balance and get the ten gold dollars into town, and – but that was too much to hope for. The storekeeper owed him nothing, and Cullen was already deep enough in debt with him. None of his other friends in town would have thirty-five dollars cash on-hand, and he'd never get to Boyd Ainsley's and back before nightfall, not walking one way. Still, he had to try _something, _damn it. He was needed at home!

His protest was interrupted as Ellie came out from the back of the house, wiping her hands on her apron. "Mist' Bohannon?" she said, clearly astonished. "But you's in jail!"

He managed a thin smile. Ellie was ten years Bethel's junior, but she had the same indefatigable manner that came from being the supreme female authority in the home. "I'm out now," he said. Out _for _now would have been more accurate. "Got me up in front of a judge a little early."

"Praise the Lord for small mercies!" Ellie said, bustling forward. She was plump and had once been very pretty, with skin the caramel brown of hoarhound candy. She accomplished with a flap of her hand what Cullen had not with his belligerent tugging, and got Ben to release his grip. "I didn' raise you to leave no gent'man standin' drip-wet in the doorway!" she scolded. "You go 'n fetch Mist' Bohannon a towel fo' that hair, an' you pour him a stout glass of brandy! Don' you know he been locked up four days without the comforts of home? Go on, _scoot!_"

Ben loped off at a run, taking the steps three at a time. The moment he was gone, Ellie leaned in towards Cullen, her face gentle and grave. "They let you off, then, sir?" she asked. "Ain' no fine?"

He shook his head. He would have been reluctant to confide in anyone else, but Ellie had about her such an air of Bethel's own trustworthiness that he found the words coming of their own accord. "Thirty-five dollars," he said. "Payable by nightfall or they lock me up again. Listen, when Doc comes back could you ask him to stop by the jailhouse and see if I'm still there? I'm goin' try to raise the money somehow, but I don't know—"

Ellie clicked her tongue and gestured for silence. "That why you come here. 'Cause the doctor say he goin' pay your fine if it more than you can manage. He tol' me," she said at his look of astonishment. "Tell me mos' ev'ythin'. Ain't tol' Mist' Ben, though. Mos' likely thought you wouldn' want it gen'rally known."

"He was right," Cullen muttered, his cheeks burning with mortification. Suddenly he resented the land and the half-picked crop that was calling for him. Without it, he could have just closed his mouth and sat out whatever short sentence George White assigned in lieu of payment. He wouldn't have had to go begging at the doors of friends.

Ben came thundering down the stairs, a towel swinging from one hand. "Here you are, Mr. Bohannon," he said. "Brandy? Or whiskey? I know you like your whiskey."

He had gleaned that knowledge from his older brothers' gossip, no doubt. Cullen's fingers closed on the cloth, but before he could speak Ellie took up again. "Chile, you's a shame on my bones," she said. "Go wash that face, an' scrub behind you' ears. Can' you see we gots comp'ny?"

Ben looked ready to protest, but the hold his mammy had over him was far too strong. "Yes, ma'am," he said crisply, and retreated upstairs once more. This time he did not spring over two steps at a time, but soon enough he was gone.

"You dry that wet hair; you goin' catch you' death of the damp," said Ellie. "An' jus' you come in here." She started into the dark cavern of the doctor's study, and Cullen followed obediently. He blotted at his beard, but was reluctant to drag the clean cloth over a head still begrimed with four days of prison dirt. "Now, I know the doctor meant to be there in court on Tuesday," she said. "To give you a frien'ly face in the crowd an' to be there in case things didn' go your way. But his work like it be, he thought he bes' get over to the bank while he gots the chance… ah, here!"

She had found something in the top drawer of the desk, and she held it out to Cullen. It was a leather moneybag, heavy with coin. It clinked as it settled against his work-roughened palm. "I don' know if it be enough," she said; "but I know that what he fetch it fo', an' I know he'd wan' me to give it you now he 'way. Don' wan' you spendin' no 'nother night in prison: you gots to get home to your folks an' that li'l boy of yours." Her expression grew suddenly tender. "Mist' Bohannon, he tol' you your boy come down with a col' in his chest?"

"He told me a cold," Cullen said, his breath suddenly shallow. "It's in his chest?"

"Jus' a dry ol' cough, the doctor say," Ellie reassured him. "Bethel, she know what to do for a boy that sick; you ain't got cause for worry. But a chile that ailin', even jus' a li'l bit, he wan' know his pappy near."

Cullen swallowed hard and jerked his head in a tiny nod. His compunctions about taking the money from the slave in Doc's absence dissolved. He had to get home: there was nothing else to say on the matter. If Ellie was mistake and Doc Whitehead was angry… well, Cullen would just have to cope with that on down the line. He couldn't pass another night in that fetid little cell, fretting and pacing and wondering what was happening at home. He'd lose his mind.

He shook out the coins into his palm. Half-eagles: enough to pay the fine twice over. He put all but seven back into the pouch and returned it to the woman. Staring down at the bright coins he gave a ragged sigh. "Thank you," he whispered. "You thank Doc for me, too, all right? I'll stop by to do it myself when I get the chance, but…" He bit his lower lip. "There ain't words for this, Ellie. Ain't words."

She reached and curled his fingers around the gold, patting them in a motherly way. "The doctor love you like you his own boy," she said. "He know you'd do jus' the same did one of them three run up on har' times." She turned, replaced the sack in the drawer, and grinned. "Now, when Mist' Ben done scrubbin' that nose of his, you kin sit an' have a nice drink while I lay on supper."

The distant scents of ham and fried potatoes were stirring his nostrils, and the thought of hot food was a terrible temptation after a long day's fast and short commons before, but Cullen shook his head. "I can't," he said. He flicked his fist so the money clinked. "I got to pay this in, and then I got to get home. Mary… and my boy… I got to get home."

Ellie nodded knowingly. "You get on," she said, taking the towel from him. "You goin' be awright in that rain without no hat?"

"Sure, I'll be fine," Cullen promise. "Heck, I'm already wet: what more can it do?"

_*discidium*_

Bethel had brought Missus Mary's rocker into the kitchen so that she could sit close by the stove and rock Gabe in her lap. The little boy was wrapped in the quilt from his bed, curled against his mother with his head on her breast. He was fresh out of a hot bath that had helped to clear his stuffy nose, and Bethel was just mashing the turnips for his supper.

Missus Mary, her work dress splattered with water from bathing her child, worked one foot against the floor so the rocker swung soothingly. A corner of the blanket was pulled up like a cowl around the boy's head, so she stroked his cheek instead of his hair. He was flushed with the mild fever that had been sapping his energy all afternoon, and he did not seem to want to do anything but cuddle against his mama and rest.

"You didn' ought to go out tonight, Missus," Bethel said, watching the little boy as her hands stirred cream into the turnips of their own accord. "You stay in bed an' comfort that chile. I's goin' watch the fires instead."

The young woman's eyes held no protest: only gratitude. "What do you think, Gabe?" she coaxed. "Would you like to sleep in Mama's bed tonight?"

"Yass'm," he murmured. His small, curled fist snagged against one of her buttons and his littlest finger gripped it. "When Pappy comin' home?"

"On Tuesday, dearest," Missus Mary said. Her lower lip trembled as she spoke. "He'll be home on Tuesday."

It was hard to watch her enduring the question yet again. The little boy asked it at least a dozen times a day, and each time one of them had to answer. Bethel understood her mistress's pain and the anxiety that lay beneath her patient reply. She was just as worried about Mister Cullen as Bethel was. They both knew that he would be frantic to get home and back to the all-important work of harvest-time. The other labors that had been laid aside in the desperate push to salvage the tobacco had to be resumed, and soon. The yams were ready to be brought in, and the cornfield had to be plowed under for the winter wheat. Bethel and Missus Mary had been bringing in peas and beans to be stored dry in sacks, and they were managing that all right, but it was also time to inspect every roof and wall and chink on the place to be sure they were tight for winter. All this and more would be plaguing Mister Cullen, and he never coped well with inaction. Knowing there was work to be done and being unable to do it would be terrible for him. Added to that were all the worries that came with the word "jail". Was he warm enough at night? Were they feeding him properly? Would he catch some awful sickness from one of the other prisoners? And the county jail housed not only those waiting for trial, but those serving short sentences for theft and assault, and those waiting to be hanged for armed robbery or murder or rape. The thought of her beloved boy locked up with such desperate characters haunted Bethel in the night.

At least Meg was stronger. She had slept last night in her own bed, and today she had insisted upon going out to work in the tobacco. Only the fact that at picking time she held the pole and did not stoop at all had kept Bethel from forbidding it. Meg had pointed out that with her to help, both Nate and Elijah could pick, and there was nothing to be said to that. Time was too short, and the crop too badly needed, and Bethel knew that Mister Cullen would rather die than have his wife out there, even just with a pole. So in the end she had consented.

She took two plates and filled them. Supper was simple but hearty tonight; mashed turnips, their greens cooked with a tiny sliver of salt pork for flavor and tossed with butter and pepper, biscuits warmed over from breakfast, and a rich jackrabbit stew. Nate had traps all along the well-worn runs in the east bush, and this morning he had found two lean old hoppers. They were too lean for roasting, and too tough for frying, and so Bethel had decided to stew them. The concoction had been simmering away all day, and was now thick and fragrant. They had no potatoes, but there were turnips in it, and carrots and parsnips and peas, both green and split, and Bethel had flavored it with fresh herbs and a little fennel. It smelled sumptuous, and she dished out some for Mister Gabe and a generous helping for Missus Mary. She carried them into the dining room, and then came back to lift the child from his mother's lap.

"No…" Mister Gabe protested, twisting in Bethel's arms and reaching for his mama. The old woman jiggled him gently and let him settle against her shoulder. She untangled the blanket wrapped around his legs and set it on the kitchen table, then tugged down the hem of his nightshirt and bore him out of the kitchen.

"Now honey," she said. "You's goin' eat your supper an' then you an' your mama can go lie down. Mama could do with a lie-down, I think: out in the rain pickin' beans all aft'noon."

Why Missus Mary insisted upon taking it in turns to work the garden Bethel didn't understand. She was an old nigger, maybe, but she was strong and she was tough. Ladies didn't have any business going out in the rain, not when somebody had to stay inside and mind the sick child. But Missus Mary had argued that neither one of them could afford to take ill as well, and they had to trade off so that Bethel did not catch a chill.

She took her seat now with a tiny, tired sigh, and Bethel set Mister Gabe down on his pear box, putting his spoon in his hand. He perked up at the sight of the food, and took a large scoop of stew. He chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. "Mama, it don' taste," he said.

Missus Mary, filling her own fork with turnips, frowned a little in gentle reproach. "Gabe, that isn't nice," she said. "If you don't like the way that your food tastes, you say 'no, thank you'. You don't announce that it tastes bad."

He shook his head. "Don' taste bad," he said. "It don' _taste_. Don' taste nuttin'."

Bethel smiled, though her mistress looked puzzled. "He can' taste it, Missus," she explained softly. "His li'l nose all plugged up."

"Oh!" Missus Mary was surprised into a laugh: just a tiny laugh, but a sweet sound after a hard and unhappy week. "Try and eat it anyhow, darling. It's good for you."

She did not need to encourage him: the child was eating enthusiastically. The sight eased Bethel's worries immensely. So long as he had a good appetite there was no cause to send for the doctor. Mister Gabe was only tired out. The fever wasn't high and he sniffled more than he coughed. The two women could take care of him; it wasn't worth two precious dollars to have the doctor call again. Not yet.

She retreated quietly into the kitchen. The sun had set and the twilight was fading fast. She hurried to make the final preparations for the field hands' supper, but she could not help but look out into the gathering gloom and think of Mister Cullen in the county jail in Meridian. Six miles seemed such a long way, and four days such a long time. She wanted him home. The place just wasn't right without its master.

_*discidium*_

Cullen could not keep up much of a pace. He was exhausted after days of inadequate sleep, and his legs were sore and weary. His head throbbed miserably, and he longed for the blessed relief he had felt that afternoon – had it only been that afternoon? – when he had dragged upon Joe Dayton's pipe. Not two miles out of town he had found himself soaked to the skin, the rain penetrating through the light wool of his old frock coat and creeping through to his underwear. The road had turned to mud and his feet were wet, too. They squelched with every step in his sodden socks. There was no doubt about it: his boots were leaking. As the sun set the air grew colder, and he walked with his arms crossed over his chest, hugging himself for warmth. A little past the halfway point in his journey the last of the daylight had abandoned him, and he was walking now by memory and the faint glow of a moon high above the clouds. It was drawing on to full, and furnished just enough light for Cullen to keep from veering off into the ditch and wrenching his ankle.

He was too tired now for his worries. He had had to wait almost forty minutes at the jailhouse while Joe tried to sort out the business of the fine. The clerk had apparently forgotten to forward the paper as instructed, and Joe had had to go and roust someone to open up the courthouse so he could look for it. Then there was confusion over George White's penmanship and whether he had written "thirty-five" or "forty-five". Of course, good-natured though he was Joe could not simply take Cullen's word for it, and the debate had wrangled on while Cullen grew ever more irate. Finally he had handed over Doc Whitehead's money and taken his leave with whatever dignity he had left. Bereft of any further resources, he had started out on the long walk home.

Six miles wasn't far, really; on a clear day, well-fed and well-rested and cheerful, it would have been a pleasant jaunt. But Cullen's exhaustion and weariness of spirit were dragging on him. He was stumbling tiredly through the puddles when he finally reached the familiar lane and turned in towards his own land. The fences were pale ribbons in the filtered moonlight, their pocked and hail-scarred whitewash absolved of its faults by the night. The house stood silent, its front windows darkened, but at the sight of the looming, well-beloved shape Cullen still had to fight the urge to sink to his knees in relief.

If he had arrived home two hours before, he would have gone straight out to the tobacco to speak to Nate and Elijah. Now one would be in his cabin, taking a little ease before bed, and the other would be up in the kiln with the fires. Cullen didn't think he had the strength to wander so far just for tidings. He shuffled around the side of the house and into the dooryard. There was a startled whine and a sound of old paws padding in the wet, and Jeb came hurrying to greet him. Cullen knelt, not caring for the knee of his ruined trousers, and scratched the old hound under his chin.

"Been waiting for me?" he asked hoarsely.

Jeb licked his palm in greeting, and then trundled up the stairs onto the stoop. He lay in the patch of lamplight thrown by the window, resting his head on his paws. By the time Cullen straightened himself up and tackled the two steps the dog was drowsing, comforted by his master's return.

Drawing in a bracing breath, Cullen opened the door. He had intended just to reach for the bootjack and get back outside to remove the mud-caked footwear, but the warmth and cozy welcome of the room were more than he could bear. He stepped over the threshold and let the door swing against his back, momentarily overcome with the solace of being home at last.

He did not have long to linger. As he stood there, dripping from clothes and hair and fingertips, Bethel came backing into the room with empty dishes in both hands, nudging the door with her shoulder. She turned, gave a little cry, and had to tighten her grip hastily before she dropped the plates and cut-glass tumblers. Her eyes, momentarily wide with alarm, suddenly melted in gentle pity and she bolted forward, lingering mid-step long enough to abandon the dishes on the corner of the table.

"Chile, you come home!" she cried, gripping his elbows and staring rapturously up at his face. The cloth gurgled wetly under her grasp, and she looked him over. "Why, you's soaked to the bone. Get off them wet things, Mist' Cullen, 'fore you takes a chill."

She shepherded him to the bench and dragged over the bootjack. He raked tiredly at the wet leather, dragging out his feet while his fingers found the buttons of his coat. He half-expected Bethel to undertake the business of undressing him as she so often did when he came in dog-tired from the fields, but she was watching him with her hands pressed to her body, one on her stomach and the other on her bosom. She looked like someone smitten by a holy vision and unable to quite believe what she saw.

"Why you home? They let you go? Oh, Mist' Cullen, you didn't bus' out, did you?" she gasped with dawning horror.

"No, I didn't bust out," said Cullen. "They moved up my hearing at a minute's notice. Hardly had time to put my vest on." He let that same garment fall wetly to the floor. Now that he was out of the cold he was shivering violently, and he fought the urge just to tear off his sodden shirt. He grappled with the buttons instead. "George White was the Justice of the Peace. Found me guilty: thirty-five dollar fine for letting Meg go at large."

Bethel's dismay deepened in earnest. "Mist' Cullen, you ain' got no thirty-five dollars," she said. "They's goin' come catch you when they knows you can' pay."

"They ain't goin' catch me," he said as he dragged his undershirt over his head and dropped it. "I paid: borrowed the money from Doc Whitehead. He offered it himself. Didn't even make me ask. He…" He could only shake his head again, helpless before the old man's kindness.

Bethel let out a long breath. "Then it over?" she gasped. "You's home to stay?"

"It's over."

The words seemed to drain him of the last of his strength. Not caring that he was sitting half-naked in the middle of the kitchen, grimy water from his hair still trickling down his face and neck, he twisted on the bench, crossed his arms on the tabletop, and laid his throbbing head down upon them. His shoulders heaved with the effort of drawing a steady inhalation. It was over. It hadn't gone well, but it hadn't gone as badly as it might have, either. The law was off his back. He was a free man again. He was home. It was over.

He felt a hand upon his left shoulder blade, bony and rough and wizened, but strong and impossibly tender. Its mate found purchase at the root of his right arm, fingers spread over his ribs and thumb against the broad triangular muscle that ached so badly after a day in the tobacco but now felt only feeble and spent. The thumb stroked his wet skin once, firm and gentle, and the hands squeezed consolingly.

"You jus' rest a minute, Mist' Cullen," Bethel said softly. "I got water standin' from Mist' Gabe's bath. Jus' you let me warm it up, an' then I's goin' help you wash. You's too wore out to shif' for youself tonight."

She was right, and he knew it. It would be a comfort, anyhow, to let her care for him as she had done in those long-ago carefree days of boyhood. He tried to nod, rocking his head a little against the cradle of his arms. Now that his nose had stopped its running he could smell the heady fragrances of the supper that must have concluded close to an hour ago. Why Bethel was only now bringing in the dishes he could not imagine and did not much care.

"Bethel," he said. His voice quavered, but he could not help it. He didn't have the strength to stop it. He didn't have the strength for anything at all, except to raise his head once more – and he knew he could only do that for one reason in all the world. "Bethel, is there anything left to eat?"

He could hear the smile in her words; that smile she only wore when she was proudly feeding the ones she loved. "Yassir, Mist' Cullen," she said. "I gots plenty to eat, an' it still hot, too. Jus' you wait one minute, honey, an' I kin dish it up."

He wondered vaguely how and why she had hot food waiting at this hour, when everyone had long ago been fed. Surely she had not known to expect him. Or had she? Not intellectually, of course, but with that uncanny instinct for the needs of others that made her such a wonder.

"Where's Mary?" he asked thickly, forcing his tired lips to shape the words but not quite ready to lift his skull off his forearms.

"Gone to bed," said Bethel. "Mist' Gabe got hisself a col', an' he sleepin' in the big bed tonight. Oh, he goin' be happy you's home, chile. All he talk 'bout these four days: 'When my pappy comin' home?'."

The table shook a little as she set down a heavy bowl. Cullen hoisted his head at last, using his elbows to push himself up off the tabletop. The savory scent of game and spices filled his nostrils, and he blinked the fog from his eyes to reveal a heaping bowl of thick, dark stew. Bethel set down a silver spoon and he grabbed it ham-fisted, too tired and far, far too ravenous to care about his manners. He curled his other hand around the dish and dragged him to it. The porcelain was hot to the touch, and he dug into the rich broth with the spoon. There were cubes of vegetables and bright green peas, and shreds of meat boiled tender.

"Where'd you get this?" he asked. "What kind of meat is this? We ain't got no meat."

"That there jackrabbit stew," Bethel said proudly. "Nate put out traps: we's had meat ev'ry day since Wednesday. That boy got more sense 'n I give him credit fo'."

Cullen stared at the dish. Jackrabbit stew. Caught in a trap laid by one of his slaves, no doubt in the woods that bordered Sutcliffe's land. Suddenly it was a hot July afternoon again and he stood, sticky with sap and smeared with mud, his head throbbing and swimming with dizziness, locked in the quarrel that had given rise to all this recent misery. The taunt of his wealthy neighbor rang in his ears. He liked jackrabbits? Of course he did. They made such a nice change from split peas and molasses.

But his mouth was flooded with spittle and his stomach shriveled into painful knots beneath his ribs. He was hungry, so hungry, far too hungry to care anymore. Rabbits gave good meat, even if it was cheap meat, poor-man's meat, deemed unfit for planters to lay on their tables. Hastily, almost manically, Cullen began to eat.


	46. Division of Labor

_Note: Once again, with regards to the legislation: it was all real._

**Chapter Forty-Six: Division of Labor**

Gabe stirred, his little body heaving with a single deep cough, and slept on. Lying curled beside her son, Mary was wakeful despite her weariness. She was burdened with the worries of running the plantation, and she was anxious for Cullen. If only Gabe were not ill, she would ride into Meridian in the morning to see him regardless of his instructions. She might do it anyhow. Bethel was certainly capable of caring for the little boy on her own for three or four hours. It would comfort her, too, if Mary was able to bring back news that Cullen was faring well – or as well as might be expected in the circumstances. And she could bring him something nice to eat; some fresh biscuits perhaps. Mary did not know for certain, but she imagined that jail fare left much to be desired.

Bethel was obviously as sleepless as she. Up until just a few minutes ago she had been clattering around in the kitchen, even though the day's work was over. Bethel kept herself busy to cover her anxieties, while Mary could only lie quietly and brood. She curled her arm to stroke Gabe's hair, and tugged the blankets closer beneath his chin. She should have gone to his bed instead. Her own was so broad and empty without Cullen's strong, lean body on the other side, and the bedroom was cold. The scrap of tarpaper stuck over the hole left by the broken pane did not keep out the chill of the rainy night. Perhaps when Cullen came home she could ask whether one of the panes from the front bedroom could be moved in here. She didn't know why she had not thought of it before.

The stairs creaked as someone ascended on quiet feet. Bethel, no doubt coming to check whether anything was needed. Or perhaps to leave the bottle of soothing syrup in case Gabe woke in the night and needed it. He coughed again, his ribs spasming thrice in rapid succession. Mary snuggled nearer to him, feeling the warmth of his fever through his nightshirt. She hoped it would break before dawn. Poor little thing, he had been so quiet today. Not miserable, or even cross, but quiet and so unlike his usual lively self. She knew it was not just the chest cold that was draining his energy: like everyone else he was missing his father.

The bedroom door opened, raising a brief draft from the window. The curtains fluttered and let in the clouded moonlight. Her back still to the door, Mary asked; "Did you bring up the soothing syrup?"

The footsteps crossed the floor, slapping softly as only bare feet did, and Bethel's presence seemed to loom strangely large behind her. There was a soft clink of thick glass being set on the bedside table, followed by the tinkle of a spoon. "Right here," a low voice said.

Mary whirled, turning onto her back and sitting up in one swift motion. Her eyes were wide in the gloom, and she flung the blankets off of her legs, only just remembering to keep them tucked between her hip and Gabe's body. The familiar slope of her husband's lean, muscular shoulders was silhouetted against the pale wallpaper. His hair clung wet to his scalp. His face was briefly illuminated by a blaze of red, and the rich scent of tobacco smoke wafted to her.

"You're home!" she cried, only just managing to keep her voice at a whisper. She sprang to her feet, the hem of her nightdress tickling her ankles, and flung her arms about his neck. She embraced him and stretched to kiss him, careless of the cigar that brushed her cheek and smoldered just short of her earlobe.

"Easy, there," Cullen said softly. His hand moved up to remove the cigar from his lips and he turned his head to exhale its smoke without inundating her with it. His other hand found her waist, but clumsily. She realized suddenly that he was wrapped in a narrow quilt turned lengthwise to cover him. It reached only as far as his knees: the quilt from Gabe's little bed, which Bethel had left in the kitchen when she carried the child in to dinner. Mary's hand slipped down to Cullen's bare breastbone. But for the blanket he was naked, and he smelled strongly of lye soap.

"How?" she murmured. "Why?"

"Where else I got to go?" he asked, and his teeth flashed. He kissed her brow and then returned the cigar to his mouth, dragging deeply upon it and letting out the fragrant smoke with a weary sigh. "They bumped my hearing ahead unexpectedly. Had me up in front of George White this afternoon."

George White. Mary felt her anxieties fall from her like fetters. She shifted deeper into his embrace, drawing up the loose side of the blanket to preserve his dignity. Her arm curled over the crest of his hip and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. He was warm and real and present. He was home.

"Thank God," she breathed, her heart lifting up the brief prayer on wings of rapturous gratitude. "Then he saw the truth? He found you innocent."

Cullen's shoulders sagged, and his head bowed as he shook it. "He saw the truth and found me guilty," he said. "Thirty-five dollar fine. I borrowed the money from Doc," he added before she could ask. "Soon as I find the chance I got to ride back into Meridian and give him what we got. Don't want to be no more beholden than I have to be."

The shame in his voice made Mary's heart ache. He hated even buying goods on credit, and that was the normal way of business both for the storekeepers and for the planters. To take such a great deal of money from a friend – and for such a reason – was a sore blow to his pride. "I'm sure Doctor Whitehead was proud to do it," she soothed. "He knows you'd do the same for him."

A small, rueful half-chuckle shook Cullen's chest. "That's just what Ellie said," he murmured. "Only she seemed to think it more likely one of the boys might get into a similar situation." He planted the cigar between his teeth again and stroked her hair, his healing callouses skimming more smoothly over the silken strands than they had in months. His hand stopped where it could cup the base of her skull. "How you been?" he asked. "Bethel says you've been brave and clever and bull-headed in my absence."

Mary looked up at him, catching the glint of his eyes in the blaze of the cigar. "She said bull-headed?" she asked, amused.

"Not really," he said. "But that's what she meant, all right." He tightened his hold upon her waist with his left hand while the right reached to tilt her chin. His tone grew grave. "I didn't want you having nothing to do with the tobacco."

"I've only been watching the fires," said Mary. "It's easy work; hardly even work at all. I didn't think it wise to have Meg out there, and Bethel was needed to tend her."

"You done right," Cullen said, and there were no sweeter words he might have spoken. He took the cigar from his lips and kissed her. "I wish it hadn't come to that, but you done right."

"Meg's healing," Mary said. "She's stronger now. She was out in the fields today."

"Bethel told me. Seems we've lost time despite everyone working just as hard as they can." He sounded so bitterly exhausted as his head rocked again. "Damn the man. Damn him, he's going to ruin me."

"Don't think about it," Mary soothed. She reached to fondle a lock of hair clinging wetly to his cheek. "You had a bath. Why didn't you come and tell me straight away that you were home?"

"Didn't want you seeing me, the state I was in." It was a confession that spoke to the depths of his fatigue: not an admission he would have made if in full possession of his faculties and self-control. "Jail ain't no gentlemen's club. I stank, Mary."

All she could think to do was tease him, and try to make light of the indignities he must have suffered. "Like you do after hunting all day?" she asked sweetly. It was a fond memory from their first year of marriage: Cullen returning from a county hunt smelling of hounds and sweat, and Mary, sitting in his lap and wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.

"Like a cesspit," he mumbled grimly. He pressed his lips to the place where her part met her forehead, and inhaled deeply. "_You_ smell of heaven."

"Flatterer," she whispered. She noticed now that he was trembling; subtle but bone-deep quaking. She slipped from his grasp and put her arm around his back to grip his far elbow, steering him gently to the clothes-press. "You need to sleep," she said. "You must be worn to a shadow."

"Been missing our bed," he admitted, letting her guide him. She opened a drawer and took out his nightshirt, still fresh from its laundering because there had been no one to wear it. She rucked up the hem and held it so that he could get his arms into the sleeves. The quilt fell about his ankles and he hauled the garment on, mindful not to let the tip of the cigar touch the cloth as he settled it over his head. He plucked the brand from his teeth again and tapped the ash over the little spittoon on the washstand. His lips found it again, hungrily, and he puffed.

"Why the cigar?" asked Mary. It was peculiar for Cullen to smoke so late at night, and he never did so in the bedroom. Indeed, at harvest time it seemed he only ever indulged when they had or were visitors, and on the occasional Sunday evening.

"Felt like I needed it," he said, shrugging. He scrubbed at his beard. "Nate's been catching rabbits. Your idea?"

Mary shook her head. "His. Doctor Whitehead said that Meg needed red meat. I thought it was clever. It never even crossed my mind to think of laying traps."

Cullen hummed noncommittally. The cigar was down to its last inch, and he snuffed it against the inside of the fireplace before dropping it far back in the hearth. They would soon need to begin laying fires at night. They parted then, Mary moving swiftly back to the bed. Her feet were cold and she was anxious for the comfort of lying near her husband. Cullen moved more slowly, limping a little, and his knee barked the bedstead. He stumbled, hissing sharply, and the heavy piece of furniture rattled with the force of the impact. Gabe, who had been lying on his stomach, rolled over towards Mary's hip. His lashes fluttered in the gloom, and he sat up, coughing shallowly.

Mary patted his back until the brief fit passed, and the little boy looked up at her. "Mama?" he said sleepily. "When Pappy comin' home?"

The question had been a dagger in her heart all week, but now Mary almost laughed for joy. Cullen, who had found his way around the bed at last, sagged down on the edge of the mattress so that the ropes grew taut. "Right here, son," he said.

Nimble as a monkey Gabe scrambled across the bed, climbing into his pappy's lap and hugging him tightly. His arms scarcely reached to touch Cullen's back, but he squeezed with all his might and his father's beloved hands spread over spine and shoulder blades.

"You's home! You's home! I knowed you'd come home!" the child crowed triumphantly. He braced his hands on his father's chest and pushed back to look up at him, though he could see little more than a shadow. He reached up, leaning back against Cullen's grasp, and planted a palm on each whiskered cheek. "I minded my mama," he announced.

"Good man," said Cullen, and at last he sounded almost happy. "I hear you ain't been well."

"It jus' a li'l cold," Gabe said gravely. "Bet'l say I's healt'y as a horse, but even a horse catch a cold sometimes."

"Well, Bethel would know," Cullen agreed. He drew Gabe in against his body and hoisted himself further onto the bed. He tucked his legs under the blankets and shifted so that he was positioned to ease onto the pillow. Mary reached to plump it for him, and he tried to lift the child off of his lap and onto the mattress beside him. Gabe was clearly expecting such an attempt, however, because he seized the front of Cullen's nightshirt with one hand and grabbed a fistful of his hair with the other.

"No!" he declared defiantly. "I's goin' stay right here 'n cuddle a while."

Mary held in her laughter, but Cullen did not. He chortled softly and settled Gabe in the crook of his arm. "That's settled, then," he said. "You can stay right there, but I got to lay down. It's been one heck of a day, and I'm tuckered right out. That all right with you?"

"Yup," said Gabe. "I's tuckered, too."

Mary lifted the bedclothes so that Cullen could execute the challenging maneuver of lying down gently with a small boy on his chest. Once Cullen was on his back, Gabe's legs curled up towards his bottom so they rested on Cullen's stomach. He rubbed his head against the front of his father's nightshirt until he found a comfortable position, and patted the man's collarbone. Mary lifted her own legs into bed, smoothed the bunched skirts of her nightdress, and drew the covers over the three of them.

Cullen patted the tick beside him. "C'mere," he murmured, eyelids already drooping with imminent slumber. "I reckon Mama could do with a cuddle herself."

Mary scooted in close, and Cullen put his arm beneath her neck so that he could place his hand upon her back. His head tilted in to rest against hers, and he let out a long, soft sigh. Gabe sniffled and then sneezed, his whole body contracting. His cheek nuzzled Cullen's chest. "Pappy, I's glad you come home," he said. "Pappy?"

No reply came. Cullen was fast asleep. Rapt in the blissful consolation of having her husband once more safe beside her, Mary was swift to follow.

_*discidium*_

Lottie's hair smelled of sweet wood smoke. It was a comforting scent to wake to, and Meg almost did not mind leaving the welcome oblivion of slumber behind. Almost, until she realized that she had to pick herself up off of the mattress. She did not habitually sleep on her stomach, but with her back in the state it was she had no choice. Her ribs and breasts ached after supporting the weight of her body all night, and her arms were stiff as she pushed herself onto her knees. The straining of the muscles across her shoulder blades brought sharp ripples of pain, and she gnawed down upon her lip. The scab where she had split it broke open, but no blood welled up. The soft, healing flesh smarted as it was exposed to the cool morning air. Carefully Meg climbed over Lottie and moved across the cabin. She found the matchbox by touch and lit the lamp, turning the wick low so that the glare would not wake her girl. Then she went to the clothes pegs.

Missus Mary had mended her petticoat, and Bethel had washed it and let it hang to bleach, but the brown bloodstains remained. The sight of them made Meg tremble, and she stepped into the garment as hastily as she could so that they would be hidden behind her. One of the overseers had thrown it to her when she had begged, sobbing, for something with which to cover herself. The torn shift had left her little more than naked, and she had actually felt gratitude towards the man when he gave her back her petticoat. Now she wished she had not put it on to be bled over. A darned waist she might have forgotten, but the stains would haunt her with the memory of that terrible night locked away with only her pain and her terror for company.

She eased her dress over her head, still unable to stretch too far. The effort left her clammy and breathless, and she sank down upon a corner of the bench. She wondered how long it would take for her hurts to heal enough that she could move without suffering. Tomorrow was the Lord's Day: a full week since she had first been whipped. She wondered anxiously whether there was any way she could sneak over to Hartwood. She had to see Peter, to speak to him, to reassure herself that he was healing, too. Nate's account of his condition had not been encouraging, and though she knew he would not lie even to comfort her she feared that perhaps he had been gentle with the truth. She knew she was a fool even to think about crossing that property line again, but her heart and her head were not in agreement. She had to talk to her husband. They had to comfort one another. If they had been born on the same plantation, they could comfort one another.

Not for the first time she wished miserably that the hard times had not come before old Mr. Bohannon could buy up her man. She believed he would have done it; Bethel had confided in her around the time of Lottie's first birthday that she thought he was considering it. Their marriage had proved fruitful: it was a sound investment to buy Peter. But then the crop had failed and the loan had been called in, and for a while there was no money for anything, not even enough to keep Mister Cullen at university. The plantation had never quite recovered from that first bad year.

Someone knocked upon the door, and Meg straightened, startled and a little guilt-ridden. Had she been lost in thought so long that the men were abroad already, wanting a breakfast she had not even started? Hurriedly she fumbled with the buttons of her basque.

"Come in," she said softly as she reached the ones above her breasts. Something scraped against the door and the latch lifted in three unsteady jerks. "I'm sorry: I ain't even begun," she said, smoothing the front of her frock. "I don't know what's got into me."

"Ain't no hurry," the caller said. "They're still abed."

Meg's breath caught in her throat at the voice, and as he rounded her she moved hurriedly to get her feet under her. "Mist' Cullen!" she cried. "You's…"

"Home," he finished for her. "Don't get up, Meg. Not this time."

She noticed belatedly that his arms were piled high with stove-lengths, and he moved to deposit them in the woodbox, doing so with care so as to avoid waking Lottie with the noise. "I thought you might be running short of fuel," he said quietly. Then he knelt down in front of the stove and pulled the fire-door open with a quick jerk of his fingers. He took two slender quarter-logs, and began to stir up the embers. The ruddy glow dyed his stained old shirt a brilliant orange.

"You don' need to be doin' that, Massa," Meg said, getting to her feet and hurrying to pick up a piece of wood herself. He reached and took hold of it, looking up at her with somber, penetrating eyes. For a moment they stood thus, the wood held between them. Then Meg's fingers let go and she cast down her gaze. "I's much better, Mist' Cullen," she murmured. "I's managin' fine."

"I'm glad," he said softly. There was a thin homemade cigar in his mouth, half-smoked already. He dragged deeply upon it as he sat back on his heels and watched the flames take. Satisfied that the fire was building, he nudged the door closed and opened the damping vents all the way. At last he stood, and relieved Meg of the unbearable awkwardness of having her master on his knees at her feet.

He was looking at her searchingly, questing for something. His fingers moved blindly to pluck up the cigar, and he rolled it between finger and thumb. "Meg…" he said, and his voice was so gentle and kind that she had to fight off the urge to weep.

"I's much better," she said. "Healin' bravely, Bethel said."

"I'm glad," he breathed again. "Meg, I'm sorry."

She looked up at him, startled. For a white man to apologize to any Negro was a strange event. To apologize to one of his field hands? That was almost unthinkable. "You ain't got cause to be sorry," she protested feebly. "It weren't no fault of yours."

"Yes it was." For a moment his eyes were hard as steel, cast inward, but then they focused on her again and grew gentle. "It was, Meg. I goaded that man. I threatened him with the law that day after the hailstorm, and I guess… I guess he must have been looking for a way to turn my own threat against me. He seized on you for that, and that wasn't right."

"It wasn' right, Mist' Cullen, but that ain' on you," Meg said. This was worse than anything else: worse than Missus Mary's tender pity, worse than Bethel's motherly fussing, worse than Elijah's quiet sorrow and Nate's valiant daring on her behalf – worse even than the shocked hurt in Lottie's eyes. Mister Cullen was tormenting himself, must have been tormenting himself all the time he was in prison, and she did not know if she could bear that.

"It is on me," he said. "I should have seen. Should have known." He shook his head and stared down at the glowing tip of his cigar. He thrust the butt between his lips and drew upon it, eyes fluttering briefly closed in relief. Twin serpents of smoke trickled from his nostrils and twined in the lamplight. "Even if I was too stupid to see, I should have known about the pass. I'm your master. It's my business to know the law as it applies to my people. I had no earthly idea I had to give you a paper, and I should have known it. It weren't nothing but laziness that I didn't."

"You ain't lazy, neither!" Meg protested vehemently. "You gots more get-up-an'-go than any white man I ever knowed nor heard of! Don' you go sayin' words like lazy, Mist' Cullen! I won' stand for that!"

"Hush," he whispered, looking over his shoulder towards the bunk where Lottie slept. When he looked back at her his face was almost sad. "You're a good woman, Meg. You always been a good woman. I'm grateful I got you." The cigar travelled from one corner of his mouth to the other. It was queer to see him smoking: it was a leisurely pursuit, not business for a working morning. "I just… I want you to know if I could do it over I'd do it different. I never should have let it happen to you."

"You took my place," she murmured, her heart suddenly flooded with the old reverent admiration for her master. "Ain't no other man on earth woulda done sumthin' like that."

Mister Cullen sighed. "It was all I could think to do to start making it right."

Meg nodded tremulously. They couldn't keep talking about this. She had to say something to change the course of the conversation, but she could think of nothing. "They let you go!" she said, trying to sound cheerful and failing wretchedly. "Nate tol' us you was goin' be there 'til Tuesday."

"Yeah, I got loose early," Mister Cullen said. She thought that he, too, was forcing a certain levity into his tone. "You need anything else done 'round here? I could fetch water."

She shook her head. "Lottie filled ev'ry pail las' night," she said. "My girl a good li'l worker."

"Yes, she is," agreed Mister Cullen. He flicked the ash from his cigar and wiped his hand on the side of his pant-leg. "Well, I'll leave you to your morning. I don't get back and eat something, Bethel's goin' hunt me down with a noose."

Meg laughed a little at this, and was rewarded by a tiny crinkling at the corners of her master's eyes. He looked younger when he smiled. He moved to the door, and suddenly she remembered the question that had preyed on her mind all last night until exhaustion finally forced her into slumber. "Mist' Cullen, what we goin' do?" she asked.

"Do about what?" he said, turning to face her again. From the look on his face she knew he wasn't puzzled, but merely wondering which of the dozen problems floating in his head was on her mind now.

"'Bout them yams. Elijah said we gots to get 'em in 'fore the firs' frost, an' that mos' gen'rally come 'fore these nex' two weeks is up," she said.

His eyes grew wide and she realized with a little burst of horror that he had forgotten all about the sweet potato crop. "Hell's afire," he breathed.

He paced over to the stove, lifted one of the lids, and tossed the butt of his cigar into the fire. Then he crossed to the table and took a match from the box. From the cuff of his sleeve he drew out another slender stick of wrapped tobacco, bit down on one end, struck the match and lit it. He puffed several times, frantically, until the rich smoke filled his mouth. Meg watched him wordlessly. He wasn't smoking like a gentleman at all. He was tearing into that cigar like a starving man would tear into a hunk of cornbread.

"You really well enough to hold that pole?" he asked. "_Really_, Meg. You be truthful, now."

"I done all right," she said with a proud little jerk of her chin. Her hair, not yet tamed under its cloth, jounced and bounced like Lottie's. "I cain't stoop none, but I can string good as I ever could."

He nodded almost hypnotically. His eyes were clouded, and she could almost see his thoughts behind them, whirling like twisters in tight formation. "Well, you can string for Nate and me both," he said. "Elijah and Lottie can start on the yams as soon as it's light. Bethel can mind the fires. It'll be a lot of work for Mary, cooking dinner and supper for everyone, but she's up to it all right. Someone's got to stay in the house with Gabe anyhow: he ain't so well." His stormy expression cleared and he nodded. "That's what we'll do. You tell everyone down here, all right, Meg?"

"Yassir, Mist' Cullen," she said crisply. "I surely can do that."

He nodded his thanks and left the cabin, closing the door softly behind him. Meg stood for a moment, looking at the place he had been. Her breath came easier than it had in days, and her tired body felt stronger. Even her back, wrapped tight in Bethel's bandages, did not trouble her so much anymore. This week had been a terrible time; perhaps the worst time of all her life. But it was over now, and the master was home. Maybe things would be better now.

_*discidium*_

They worked Saturday until nightfall: Cullen, Nate and Meg in the tobacco, Lottie and Elijah in the sweet potatoes. When they came in weary, sore and coated with mud, Mary had a hot and plentiful supper waiting. The Negroes took theirs down to the cabins, while Cullen ate at the kitchen table and Mary and Bethel brought in water for Mary's Saturday bath. Cullen retreated onto the stoop until she was finished, and then used the same water to scour away the worst of the muck and sap. He had expected to spend the entire day lusting after a cigar, but found when he was finally clean and warm again that he did not want one after all. Perhaps it was the idleness that had given smoking such an urgent appeal: after a long day of labor picking the sticky tobacco leaves he no longer had the desire.

The loss of time was not as grave as he had feared. The few prime leaves that remained were ripe, but not overripe. After some consultation with the two black men it was decided that they would go out again tomorrow, Sabbath or no, and try to finish the pass through the middle field. What was left in the top field was almost not worth picking: the leaves highest on the plants had borne the brunt of the hail and were so ragged that they would not even be useable in pipes. Cullen might be able to sell it for a penny a pound to some ship's captain looking for cheap cigarette fill for his foreign crew, but with time so pressing it seemed a waste. If it lasted until they were done with the better seconds in the other fields, they would pick it. If not it would rot. There was no sense in mourning it now.

When he came from his bath he expected to find Mary retired for the night, and he was looking forward to slipping into bed beside her for his brief hours of slumber before it was time to sit his watch in the tobacco barn. Instead he came through the dining room to find the lamp in the parlor lit and Mary seated on the couch with her dressing gown arranged prettily across her lap. Cullen, in his nightshirt and his father's smoking jacket, leaned against the doorjamb and studied her quietly. She did not see him: she was sitting very straight and staring into the empty hearth.

"Bethel would lay a fire if you want one," he said quietly.

She turned to look at him, and he was surprised by the look in her eyes. They were grim, almost hard, and her lips were pale. "Cullen, we need to talk," she said. "We need to talk about what happened to Meg."

He nodded. He had expected this, he realized. In the hell of Monday morning, when he first became aware that she was watching the awful spectacle on the front drive, he had known this conversation was coming. That he had subsequently forgotten it in the bevy of other, more urgent matters seemed unimportant now. She had waited, God bless her, until he had had a good night's sleep and a few decent meals, but the time had come. He glanced over his shoulder. They stood between Bethel and her bed, but she was bailing out the bathwater and would likely be some time in putting her kitchen to rights. He stepped over the threshold and closed the parlor door, then crossed to his armchair and sat. Weary though he was and riddled with aches his body had almost forgotten, he remained erect and near the edge of the cushion.

"Go on," he said. She had to say her piece. It was only natural. She had seen things she had never expected to see. Things he had never wanted her to see. And then she had been left to cope with the aftermath all on her own while he sat useless in a vile little cell in Meridian.

"We failed her." Mary's voice cracked a little on the second word. She cleared her throat and tucked her elbows closer to her body. She always looked so vulnerable without her corset: like a supple young sapling that might snap in a sudden wind.

"I failed her," Cullen corrected.

The blue eyes riveted upon him, shining like lightning. "_You_ failed her," she agreed.

The words fell heavy in the room, and Cullen found that he could not quite remember how to breathe. Mary was no nag. She never needled at him or criticized his choices. She never said a single word of blame. And now she was throwing his own words back at him, validating the self-loathing that had been gnawing away at his spirit all week.

"You're her master," said Mary. "It's your duty to protect her. Isn't that what you're always saying? That you have a responsibility for the welfare of your people? An obligation to provide for them and shelter them? Isn't it?"

Cullen's head bobbed, but not emphatically enough to be interpreted as a nod.

"_Isn't it_?"

She had not raised her voice, but the fervor in her words and the terrible look in her eyes rang louder than any scream. And she was giving voice to his own doubts and recriminations. He heard her perfectly.

"Yes," Cullen breathed.

"And you failed." These words were flat, devoid of anything but the hollow misery that had kept him awake during the long nights in prison. "You let Mr. Sutcliffe get the better of you, and he whipped her when she had done nothing wrong. When the only thing that anyone had done wrong was to fail to give her a slip of paper with your signature on it."

"Yes," he said. It was all that he could say.

"Why didn't you know she needed that?" Mary asked. There was turmoil in her eyes, but only a guarded curiosity in her voice.

He had confessed the truth to Meg, and she had protested that he could not call himself lazy. But that's what it was: laziness. Complacency. The placid and foolish belief that because a thing was commonly done made it legal. Made it safe. "I ain't never read the laws," Cullen admitted. "The slave laws. I ain't read 'em."

Mary's head jerked in a succinct little nod. "You only knew what you had heard from other people: from your father, perhaps, or Boyd Ainsley, or Mr. Graham or a dozen other planters. You only knew what was common practice, and what laws were often enforced. The runaway laws: you knew them all right, didn't you?"

He had to acknowledge this. Everyone knew the runaway laws: the penalties for harboring a slave, the punishment due to any darky who sheltered one, the terrible penance exacted from the one who had fled. Not a year went by without at least a couple of attempts by slaves to escape their lot in life and deprive their masters of their lawful property. "Meg didn't run," he said, pointlessly.

"No, she didn't," said Mary. She turned her body towards him, one foot slipping under the sofa. "She didn't run. All she did was go to see her husband, who by a curious mischance belongs to a man with whom you have been feuding all year. And because he was looking for a means to get the better of you, he preyed upon her. Do you see now, Cullen?"

"See what?" He wished he knew how to quiet that fire in her eyes. She was frightening him; he had never before seen her like this. "I know I failed Meg, and I ain't goin' let it happen again. I—"

"It isn't _you_!" she cried. Her fist thumped against her thigh and he saw that she had her handkerchief in it, balled tightly beneath her slender fingers. "It isn't you, Cullen, it's slavery! That's what it does: it exposes people – human _people_, Cullen! – to unspeakable indignity and degradation. It allows good men to be trapped by simple oversight into becoming complicit in the suffering of folk they care about. When people are property, without rights and worth of their own, the whole system of law and justice can be perverted to the will of spiteful men!"

Cullen felt his jaw slacken as she spoke. It had been a long while since they had seriously argued the merits and detriments of slavery. Once such a constant, quiet advocate for manumission, Mary's protests had grown fewer as the years passed. He had believed it was because she was coming to realize that it really wasn't as awful as she and her New York friends had all imagine when they had read that damned book. Harriet Stowe had a hell of a lot to answer for, but as Mary had seen the peaceful life his slaves – their slaves – led, she had gradually stopped pressing him. Once in a while she still made some intimation that she longed to free their people, but never, not even in that first year, had she taken such a tone with him on the matter.

"Mary," he said heavily. "Mary, I'm too worn out for a debate on abolition tonight. Can't we please—"

"No!" she cried. "No, we can't! Why don't you see it? Why can't you see that as long as Meg's a slave you _can't _protect her! There's nothing anyone can do to protect her, because she's property! Why did they arrest you, Cullen?"

"'Cause I wouldn't let 'em take her," he said feebly.

"What was the charge?" Mary demanded.

"Letting a slave go at large," he mumbled.

"Like a dog!" cried Mary. "Or a horse, or a bull! Like an _animal_, Cullen, as if she wasn't safe to be out in the world on her own, moving and thinking and making her own decisions!"

"That ain't how I see it," he protested.

"It's how the law sees it!" gasped Mary. "It's how Abel Sutcliffe sees it, and the sheriff, and George White. Oh, yes he does!" she said sharply as he opened his mouth to dispute this. "He does, or he would never have found you guilty. Can't you see you're just as much a prisoner of this system as Meg is? Only she's the one with the bleeding pits in her back! _She's_ the one who will never be the same again! She's the one who's paid the price for our complacency!"

The strength went out of Cullen's aching spine and he sank back miserably in the chair. His hand scrubbed at his brow and he tried to keep his frustration and his hatred of his impotence from drowning him completely. Mary was right: Meg had paid the price for his stupidity in goading Sutcliffe, his stubbornness in refusing to sell a couple hundred acres he couldn't use, his defiance in spurning the sacred social precepts of Southern life that had made him a target in the first place. "What would you have me do?" he asked.

"Free them," said Mary. "Free them all, tonight. I know we can't offer them wages at present, but we can promise room and board and to pay back wages when we're able. And if they want to leave to make a new life, let them go and we'll do what we must to get by. You care about them, Cullen. I know you do. You want what's best for them, and nothing is better than their freedom."

His eyes snapped open and he stared at her, first through her fingers and then head-on as his hand slipped inexorably down to clutch the armrest. He dragged himself forward, straightening his crackling backbone and ignoring the rippling cramping along his lower ribs. His feet, a moment ago lolling limply on the rug, slapped down firmly. "You say that like it's an easy thing," he said, enunciating slowly. "I told you before, Mary. I told you when you first come to live here. It ain't as simple as that."

"It is," said Mary. "It is as simple as that. It isn't easy, but it is simple. Give them their freedom. You can do it."

"You really think that's all there is to it, don't you?" he said. He was horrified at the scornful note that crept into his voice, but he found himself powerless to modulate it. "You think – what? That I can just call Bethel in here, stand her up on the hearthrug and say 'Well done, good and faithful servant: you're free now. Go!'? and she'll walk out of this room her own woman?"

Mary's hard expression wavered a little. There was doubt in her eyes. "I… I'm certain you would have to write up a deed to that effect," she said. "Some form of proof that you had freed her."

"Oh! I see. So I just walk over to the secretary there, and jot down a little note on the back of an old bill of lading, is that it? _Know ye who read this that the bearer, one Bethel Bohannon, is a free woman by deed of gift_… like that?" he demanded.

"Well… well, yes," said Mary uncertainly.

"You're a fool." She stiffened, and Cullen wanted to bite off his tongue. He sounded so hateful. The hurt in her eyes was terrible. But he could not stop himself. The rage and frustration of the past week, his disgust at his helplessness and the countless empty hours he had spent wishing there was something, anything, that he could do to put right this horrific mess he had made all boiled up now in an inferno of wrathful vindication.

He went on fiercely, his voice harsh and hateful. "Damn it, Mary, under Mississippi law I need legislative permission to free a slave. I ain't talking about approval from a Justice of the Peace, either. I mean from the damned Legislature! I'd have to travel to Jackson to do it. Application has to be made in the State House – made and _paid for_. And they might just as easily turn me down as grant it. Then the slave has to put in for freedom papers, and those cost too. And once they're free, then what? Suppose Nate wants to go off. He got to have work, or they'll jail him for a vagrant. He ain't allowed to sell anything he makes or grows – what's he going to grow anyway, and where? He ain't got land. Ain't got no money to buy land. He ain't allowed to own a shotgun unless he got a license for it. A license to carry a gun, Mary! Just you think about that."

He leaned in towards her, eyes fixed on hers so that he did not need to see the way her hands were trembling. He ticked off points on his left hand. "He ain't allowed to get work in a drinking establishment, or any place that's got a printing press. He got to carry his freedom papers anywhere he goes, 'cause under the law any Negro's presumed to be a slave unless he can prove up-front he ain't. If he loses his proof of registration as a free black, or can't pay to have it renewed, he can be sold back into slavery at a sheriff's auction. And all that's just under the laws we got now. There was talk back a few years ago 'bout putting through a bill requiring counties to deport their free Negroes at public expense to Liberia! What you think little Lottie would do, shipped off to Africa to live in some mud hut in the jungle? What about Elijah? You think he'd even survive a sea voyage at his age? Hellfire, Mary, it just ain't as simple as you think it is!"

The silence following this tirade was terrible. Mary was staring at him, wide-eyed and breathless. The hand gripping the handkerchief was white. The other lay limp in her lap. Her back was straight as a ramrod, and she was quaking like a leaf in a hurricane. Her lips, white as the collar of her nightgown, trembled and parted. Her tongue moved soundlessly. Then all at once she was on her feet. She bolted for the door and tore it open with such force that it bounced against the wall.

"Hey," Cullen gasped hoarsely. He scrambled out of his chair and ran after her. He reeled out into the hallway, not even seeing Bethel where she stood by the sewing machine, grave eyes upon him. Mary was thundering up the stairs. One of her bedshoes flew off and tumbled to the bottom. She did not even pause, her bare foot slapping on the next tread.

"Wait!" Cullen called. He bolted after her, his weary legs betraying him so that he tripped on the fourth step and fell crashing to one knee. He scrambled up and finished his inelegant ascent. They had never in all their married life, in all their courtship or that brief casual acquaintance that had preceded his first overture of romance, had such a quarrel, used such angry tones or such harsh words with one another. In the blazing horrified panic, he could think of nothing except that they must not be separated. She must not run from him, and he must not let her go. They had to resolve this. How they might do so did not cross his mind. He only knew that they must.

He found her in the corridor, fumbling clumsily with the nursery door. He caught hold of her arm and she whirled, pressing her back against the wall and looking at him with the wide, wild eyes of a hunted animal. "Let me go!" she gasped. "Don't touch me! Don't you touch me!"

Cullen withdrew his hands at once and held them aloft before his shoulders, palms out. "I won't," he gasped. "I won't touch you. But Mary, we got to talk about this. We can't… damn it, we got to _talk_ about this."

She drew herself up to her full height and shook her head. The moonlight spilling from the guest bedroom made her look like a specter, a slender apparition of hurt and misery – and a terrible, righteous dignity that shamed him. "Don't you think you've said quite enough for one evening?" she asked.

She took a combative step towards him, and he withdrew a pace. His heart was hammering against his aching ribs, and his throat was dry. Mary turned and seized the doorknob, pushing open the door gently. The hinges creaked.

"What are you doing?" Cullen choked out. He stood helpless behind her, hands fallen to his sides and shoulders slumped exhaustedly. The fight had drained him and he could not muster anything more than that one broken question.

She twisted and she looked at him, and there was no mercy in her eyes. "I am going to sleep with Gabe tonight," she said. "You've worked hard and you're tired: you need your own bed. But I will not share it with you. Not now."

Then she slipped into the nursery and closed the door softly but so firmly, shutting him out.


	47. An Unexpected Guest

**Chapter Forty-Seven: An Unexpected Guest**

The yams could wait a day, but the tobacco could not. Long before Mary arose from her uneasy night in Gabe's little bed the men were out in the field. They did not come in for dinner: instead Bethel sent Lottie with food and hot coffee. The day was cloudy but temperate, but the dew had been heavy in the night and they would all be sodden and chilled. Mary tried not to think about her husband bent low among the half-stripped plants, his back afire with the agonies of the labor and his mind no doubt as riddled with tumult as her own.

She did not know what had come over her. She had intended to broach the subject gently, rationally and reasonably; she had spent all day working up the courage to do so, and had positioned herself in the parlor so that Cullen could come to her of his own accord. But almost as soon as she started to speak, all of the hurt and bewilderment and fear had come bubbling up to overwhelm her. In her desperation to remain calm she knew that she had sounded cold, spiteful even, and that had doubtless spurred him on to his own angry outburst. His hard, hateful words stung her even now. He had called her a fool, and had enumerated with such vicious determination all the ways in which she was in error – and she did not even know if he had heard the truth in her words, which was worse.

She had not found the courage to go to him, though she had lain sleepless until she heard him pass the nursery door to take his watch in the barn, and had awakened from a shallow slumber at the sound of his weary return. Exhausted at last she had slept through his pre-dawn rising, and now he was out in the tobacco and she was immured in the house and there was nothing that could be said or done to mend the rift between them.

It filled Mary with bewildered misery, this quarrel. Even in the early days of their marriage, when she had pressed the question of manumission again and again until his eyes flashed with irritation and his voice became clipped and he finally proclaimed that they were not going to talk about this anymore, they had never entered into such a pitched battle. The rancor in their voices, the fury in their eyes, the sense that neither could truly hear the other – all these were strange and terrible and made her dread the twilight hour when Cullen would return to the house and they would have to face one another again.

Gabe had finally fallen asleep, curled on his side with one small fist beside his running nose. His cough was worse today: he would rattle out several in rapid succession where before he had merely barked shallowly once or twice. The fever was still only mild, but it worried Mary that it had lingered so long; three days already. But there was no denying that he was happier now than he had been all week. Again and again he would ask; "Where Pappy gone?", and again and again Mary and Bethel were able to tell him that his father was in the field with Nate and Elijah. This would bring an enormous smile that illuminated his whole face, whereupon he would nod gravely and say; "Pappy workin' hard. He goin' come in when I's sleepin'." It did not seem to matter that he could not play with his father: the simple knowledge that he was once more at home was comfort enough.

Mary drew the quilt over her child and rose up off of the edge of the bed. The curtains were drawn and the window closed. The house was cool and quiet with the gentle mercy of the fall of the year, when summer's smothering heat was broken and the world could breathe again at last. As she slipped out into the corridor Mary smoothed her hair and shook out her petticoats. Bethel was in the kitchen, shelling black beans for dry storage, and Mary had left Lottie on the parlor rug, where she had been making up stories to the engravings in _Tanglewood Tales _for Gabe. It was past time for someone to relieve Meg at the tobacco fires, and Mary had decided she would be the one to do it. With her son fast asleep she was not needed in the house, and she had put on a work dress in anticipation of this particular labor.

She was just alighting on the fourth step down the staircase when the sound of knuckles against the front door made her heart spring to her throat. For an awful moment she stood paralyzed. Last Sunday calamity had come to call. What fresh disaster now had cause to knock upon her door?

But she was the mistress, and it was her duty to cope with whatever it was while her husband was out at his labors. She steeled herself and slipped gracefully down the stairs as a second knock rang out. As she reached the bottom she caught sight of Lottie out of the corner of her eye, wide eyed and anxious and doubtless filled with the same muddled, frightened thoughts that wanted to swarm through Mary's mind. Mary managed an unsteady smile for the child, and fixed it firmly upon her face as she placed one remarkably steady hand upon the right doorknob and drew it open.

The first thing she noticed with almost weak-kneed relief was that there was no Black Maria looming over their drive. She did not know if she would ever recover from that particular sight, or cease to dread it. There was only a handsome dark horse, a Tennessee Walker, with his reigns tossed over the fence-rail. He was tacked for a long ride, with saddle-bags across his back and a canteen hanging from the pommel. All this she took in over the shoulder of the slender young man standing on her veranda with a pleasant smile on his face.

"Mrs. Bohannon?" he said, and she realized she had allowed far too long a silence to elapse. "I know it might be bad form to turn up a day earlier than expected, but if I'm to prepare properly for your husband's case I need to meet with him as early as possible tomorrow morning."

"I beg your pardon?" said Mary. She could not quite place the man's features. He looked familiar and she knew she ought to know him, but he had the unsettling aura of a person encountered in entirely the wrong context. His sturdy riding clothes, his dusty overcoat, and the small carpetbag clutched in his left hand were all out of place. He ought to be wearing evening dress and a dark silk stock, and smiling courteously as he bowed her out onto the dance floor. "Mr. Secrest!" she gasped, recognizing him at last. Rapid on the heels of that revelation was dismay. "Oh, no!"

He grinned cheerfully. "I was afraid I might catch you unawares," he said. "If there's a boarding house in town I can put up there for the night."

"No!" Mary exclaimed. She was clutching the side of the door now, and her left hand gesticulated helplessly. "No, no, it isn't that! Oh, Cullen must have forgotten to send word… his case was heard unexpectedly on Friday. He's home now. Oh, I'm so sorry: you've come all this way for nothing!"

His dark brows tangled and his smile disappeared. "His case was heard on Friday?" he asked.

"Yes," said Mary. "I don't know why he didn't think of sending a second telegram… he must have been occupied with other matters. Anxious to get home and back to work. I'm sorry." She looked at him imploringly, praying he would understand. She did not know how to explain what a nightmare this week had been, nor how to apologize for the horrendous lapse of reason that had led both her and Cullen to forget that they had summoned this poor man away from his life to help them. Added to her discomfiture was the burst of gratitude that he had come at all, despite the warning in the telegram that they could not pay him immediately. He had come to help them, and they had failed to notify him that his generous aid was no longer needed.

"Of course we must… we must somehow… we'll pay you for your trouble," Mary stammered. Helplessly she thought of the ten hoarded dollars locked in the secretary, of the thirty-five they owed to Doctor Whitehead for covering Cullen's fine, of the debts at the grocer's and the dry goods store and the lumber yard. She had no idea how they would meet those obligations, much less offer recompense for this, but they would have to manage it somehow.

"That's something it'd be more fitting I discuss with your husband, ma'am," Mr. Secrest said courteously. "Is he home?"

"He's working," she blurted out, wishing too late that she had held her tongue. There was no way to tell how this young man might take to the idea of breaking the Sabbath, and in any case she knew that Cullen would not want to admit the necessity. She closed her eyes and inhaled. It was too late now. "He's out in the tobacco. Everything that happened… it cost him a week's work."

"Of course." Mr. Secrest nodded. "Well, in the meantime is there somewhere I can water my horse? He's had a long ride and could use a rest."

"Yes!" Mary seized upon this small chance to offer hospitality. "Yes, of course. And you must come in and have something to drink. You'll stay tonight, won't you? I can have Bethel put on something special for supper, and the guest bedroom is ready."

He smiled again. "I'd admire to do that, Mrs. Bohannon," he said. He looked down at the carpetbag. "May I…"

"Please, allow me," said Mary, and took it. She turned in the doorway. "Lottie? Can you show Mr. Secrest to the stable? He… oh, dear, do you mind seeing to your own horse? I could send to the fields for Nate—"

"Don't trouble yourself, ma'am," he said, putting his hat back on his head and stepping back so that Lottie could pass through the doorway. She shot a tiny, uncertain glance at Mary, but looked ready to do as she was told. "I generally insist upon tending to Bastion myself. If your girl would just show me where to find the feed and your brushes, I'll get on all right."

He jogged down the steps and took his horse's reins, nodding to Lottie to indicate that she should lead the way. Mary watched him go, her ribs straining against her stays, and as soon as he reached the door of the barn she turned and ran through to the kitchen.

_*discidium*_

His enforced absence from the tobacco field had driven Cullen to distraction, but it had in no way left him grateful to be back. His body was rebelling at the return to the hated toil after its dubious respite, and the sinews of his torso were wracked with cramps and deep, searing spasms that rippled over his ribs and through his intestines and up towards his lungs. His shoulders burned and his arms ached, and his fingers were stiff after only a day and a half of picking. The cool of the October day should have been a relief after months of drudging in the muggy heat, but instead it left him shivering in his wet clothes and longing for another mouthful of hot coffee. It was getting on to the time when Mary usually sent out a little something to blunt the afternoon's hunger, but he did not know whether she would think of it today. Certainly he did not believe that she would withhold that mercy out of spite: she had not the capacity for such pettiness, and in any case would never punish Nate and Elijah for their master's heartless outbursts. But today being Sunday it might easily slip her mind.

He wished he could take back what he had said to her, or at least to apologize for it, but he knew he could not. There wasn't one word he had said that wasn't true. Mary, for all her intelligence and her pretty ideals, suffered from the same delusion as all Northerners: that all the world's ills could be solve by sudden, swift freeing of the slaves. Washington wanted to turn loose the entire black population of the nation and Mary was only talking about their own five darkies, but it amounted to the same thing. There was no quick solution; no easy fix; no simple way out. Mississippi could not simply free her Negroes, and Cullen certainly could not just liberate his. Even if he did not believe, earnestly and with a secret horror, that their lives would be a misery if they were freed and forced to make their own way in a white man's world, he had neither the time nor the resources to mount the lengthy process needed to do it. He could just imagine walking into Madsen's Bank with that proposal: could they lend him a sum of money between one hundred and fifty and two hundred dollars, maybe more, so that he could give away twenty-five hundred dollars in assets with no foreseeable return? It was ridiculous.

His foot collided with the side of Nate's boot as he tried to move to the next plant. They were stooping almost back-to-back, each working the opposite row but standing in the same furrow so as to be handy to Elijah. Cullen wanted to bark at Nate to watch himself, but of course that was not fair. He, and not Nate, had been the one in motion, and he could not take out his foul temper on his man. Nate had consented to give up his Sunday, and had done so without so much as a sullen look. Remembering the day when they had worked to save the crop from the threat of aphids, Cullen wondered what had changed. Then Nate had only been won over somehow by Meg's sweet reasoning, belatedly. Today he had come promptly and of his own accord.

Elijah accepted the leaf Cullen handed him. Broad though it was it was undersized, its growth stilted by the bruising hail. There were ragged pocks at its edges, fine but noticeable. Five cents a pound, Cullen thought bleakly. Maybe four. His mind tumbled through a series of worried calculations that he was powerless to stop or to ignore. How, he wondered, and not for the first time, would he possibly raise enough money on this crop to meet his obligations and feed his people?

Nate's low whistle startled him, and Cullen twisted painfully to look under his arm at the other man. "What is it?" he asked.

"Trouble, from the look of things," muttered Nate. "Look."

He jerked his chin towards the top field and Cullen turned, rising up out of his tortuous curl as he recognized Bethel, hurrying through the ruins of the top field towards them. She was without shawl or bonnet, her headscarf stark above her dark brow, and she had her skirts gathered up in both hands to keep them out of the mud. She reached the edge of the row they were working, let her hem fall into the dying indiangrass, and beckoned to him.

"Mist' Cullen, don' make me come 'n fetch you!" she called. "My shoes be wet 'nough as it is."

Elijah shifted awkwardly to one side, moving the half-laden pole with him. Cullen skirted awkwardly around the older man. "Keep picking," he said, more sternly than he meant to. Nate nodded and fixed his attention back on the plant in front of him, but from the cant of his head it was obvious that he was still listening.

"What is it?" Cullen asked as he reached the end of the row. He tried to wipe his gummy hands upon his wet oilskins, but to no purpose whatsoever.

Bethel looked him over, her face taking on a pinched, sorrowful look. Then she shook her head sharply and said in a calm but somehow dangerous voice; "Mist' Cullen, Missus Mary wan' to know did you forget to do sumthin' 'portant 'fore you lef' Meridian on Friday."

"Something important?" he parroted. "I got the money from Ellie to pay my damned fine, and started for home the minute they'd let me. What else was I supposed to do?"

Bethel's lower lip protruded grimly. "Missus Mary wan' to know did you forget to stop by the telegraph office an' sen' a message out to Scooba."

For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about, and then his blood ran suddenly cold and his innards contracted. "Shit!" he exclaimed. He tugged the ragged remains of his straw hat from his head, smacking it against his thigh, and only just managed to restrain himself from plunging his sap-coated hand into his sweat-soaked hair. He shook off his self-disgust, and said briskly; "Never mind: I'll saddle up Bonnie and ride in straight off. It'll cost me the rest of the day, but I can be in Meridian before sundown. Damn it, there'll be an extra charge for sending a telegram on a Sunday, but at least Secrest's not meant to come in until tomorrow, and—"

"He here now," Bethel said matter-of-factly.

"What? No he ain't! I told him Monday!" protested Cullen.

"He come down a day early. Says he was goin' meet with you firs' thing tomorrow to make a good start on your case," she told him. "He up at the house now, sittin' in the parlor with the missus an' sippin' down that whiskey Mist' Tate brung from New York."

For an interminable span of time it seemed that Cullen's heart had stopped, but his mind kept right on whirring. "What're we going to do about supper?" he asked, his voice low and anxious. "We can't feed him on jackrabbit and greens—"

"We gots yams at last," said Bethel. "I'll bake 'em up nice. An' I already done kill't a chicken, Mist' Cullen. I know we can' really spare no more young layers, but—"

"No, you done right," he said. "There's that wine Mary's father sent, and the bread ain't but two days old. Chicken'll have to be fried, not roasted. And something nice for dessert. Maybe with peaches? You could…" He stopped abruptly when he realized she was laughing at him, chuckling quietly while dark eyes flashed. "I don't see how this is funny, Bethel," he said crossly.

"Mist' Cullen, you soun' like a young wife a-plannin' her firs' dinner party!" the old woman said fondly, reaching to pat his cheek. Her palm snagged on a smear of tobacco sap, but it did not appear to hinder her. "Does you think this the on'y time I's ever had to put on a slap-up supper without no notice? Chile, you gots plenty worries with this here lawyer turnin' up when he ain' needed no more, but fillin' his stomach ain' one of 'em. Jus' you let me worry how we's goin' feed 'im, an' you worry 'bout how you's goin' explain how you make him come three dozen miles fo' nuthin'."

Cullen grimaced. "Is he angry?" he asked.

Bethel shrugged her lean, strong shoulders. "If he be angry, he ain't takin' it out on Missus Mary," she said. "He been a perfec' gent'man."

"Well, that's something," said Cullen. He looked down at his filthy clothes and the mud caked thick on his worn-out work-boots, then cast a long eye on the field. "I guess I got to come in and try 'n explain," he said.

"Yassir, I guess you does," said Bethel. "Ain' fair, leavin' Missus Mary to see to 'im. You gots to come in, an' you ain' goin' be able to come out 'gain 'til it time to see to the horses."

This had not occurred to him. He had planned to hurry back to the house, make his apologies in person, and come straight back to the field. He couldn't waste the scant remaining hours of daylight in the parlor with an irritated visitor and a wounded wife. "But…"

Bethel shook her head. "You can' walk 'way from this, Mist' Cullen. I know you don' wan' be in there with Missus Mary, the way you gone an' lef' things last night, but if you goin' bolt like a scared mule an' leave her 'lone with this, then you ain' the man I brung you up to be."

Suddenly his cold face burned and he could not meet her eyes. "I ain't no coward," he muttered.

"No," Bethel agreed. "That so: you ain'. But you does ten' to look fo' an hon'rable way out of uncomf'table situations. Workin' the tobacco as gots to be worked, that an hon'rable way, an' this surely is goin' be an uncomf'table situation, but you can' run from it this time, Mist' Cullen. Not if you ever wants to make things right."

He wondered whether she was talking about the situation with Jim Secrest, or his quarrel with Mary, and then realized he did not want to know. He had no idea how much of last night's conflagration Bethel had overheard, but he knew it was definitely enough. She was certainly aware that Mary had refused even to join him in their bed. He gestured vaguely up the length of his body. "I can't go in there like this," he protested feebly.

"Nawsir. I gots clean things ready in the kitchen," said Bethel. "You ain' goin' have time to bath proper, but you kin give a lick an' a promise an' scrub them hands at leas'. Come 'long now."

Cullen nodded, but turned first to the other two men. "I need you both to work on," he said. "I surely do appreciate you giving up your Sunday to do it, and I aimed to be right alongside you 'til dark, but there's been an unexpected—"

"We heard," said Nate, bluntly but without rancor. He did not even look up from the plant he was harvesting. "You go 'long. Massa gots some business he cain' leave to no one else."

And if that didn't sum up the situation, Cullen wasn't sure what did. Nodding his thanks and started through the dilapidated plants of the top field with Bethel behind him. Once they were out on the sod again he fell into step beside her.

"What did he say?" he asked, hoarse in his apprehension. "What did Mary say?"

Bethel shook her head. "I didn' hear what was said straight off, but when I come in't the parlor she got 'im talkin' 'bout horses. Missus Mary, she know how to turn a man's 'ttention to them things he loves. Ain't every lady gots that gift, Mist' Cullen."

He looked at her sharply, but there seemed to be nothing more to her words than genuine admiration for his wife. They were coming up on the house now, and he stumped up the steps to find the bootjack waiting on the stoop. Wary of sitting down lest he should find himself reluctant to rise again, Cullen attempted to use it while standing. He overbalanced and had to catch hold of the pillar to steady himself. Bethel thrust out her foot to keep the block from skidding away from him, and her hand found his elbow as he tried again to drag off his boots.

In the kitchen she retreated into the pantry and closed the door. Cullen stripped hastily to his drawers and did what he could to wash his hands, face and armpits. Bethel had brought fresh undergarments and his good day clothes down, and his riding boots, clean and beautifully blacked, were standing by the leg of the table. She had even thought to bring down Mary's ivory comb so that Cullen could tame his hair. He dressed hurriedly, gathering his soiled things into a heap by the door. Tugging smooth the front of his waistcoat, he knocked on the pantry door.

"I'm decent," he said as Bethel emerged and looked him over. "Ain't I?"

She reached to cup his chin, her thumb smoothing the whiskers at the corner of his lip. Then she nodded. "You look jus' fine," she said. "Go on in, now, an' put things right."

Once again he did not know which problem she was talking about, but it didn't really matter. He and Mary could hardly resolve their own problems with a guest to bear witness, and as much as his heart told him otherwise his head knew the issue with Jim Secrest was more pressing. He got as far as the kitchen door before he hesitated, uncertain.

A gentle, capable hand came to rest on his shoulder, squeezing bracingly. "Go on," Bethel said quietly. "You's faced worse troubles this week 'lone."

A small hollow laugh was startled from Cullen's lips. She was right, but somehow it was easier to fight than to apologize. Just at this moment he'd rather have faced Brannan and Sutcliffe all over again than walk into that parlor and make amends with a good man he had thoughtlessly inconvenienced in the presence of the woman he had hurt. But he could hardly admit this, not even to Bethel, and so he squared his sore shoulders and strode through the dining room.

Mary was laughing softly as he drew near the parlor door. "I don't think Bonnie has ever tried anything quite _that_ spirited," she said.

"I could scarcely sit down for a week," said Secrest confidentially. Then he made a small chagrined noise. "Begging your pardon, ma'am; not to be indelicate."

"Not at all, Mr. Secrest," Mary said cheerfully. "It's refreshing to speak with a gentleman who doesn't seem to think I'll shatter like a crystal vase at the slightest note of reality. In New York the young men were never quite so reluctant to be frank with a woman as Mississippi gentlemen seem to be."

"Well, now, that's the way we're raised," Jim said. "Though I expect your husband's forthright enough with you, isn't he? He strikes me as a man who puts a premium on the truth."

"Yes," Mary said, and though he tried to listen for some arch meaning in her words Cullen could hear none. "Yes, he does. He's a man of honor, Mr. Secrest."

This seemed as apt a time as any for an entrance, and so Cullen came into the room. Mary was on the couch and Secrest in his armchair, a tumbler of golden whiskey in his hand. As Cullen came in he got to his feet.

"Mr. Bohannon!" he said, crossing the hearthrug to shake Cullen's hand. Cullen hesitated, holding up his stained palm.

"Sorry," he said. "My hand's clean, but that don't scrub off. And you're welcome to call me Cullen."

Jim seized hold of his hand regardless, pumping heartily. "Cullen. I understand you've been a free man for nearly two days now. I'm overjoyed to hear it."

"I'm awful sorry," Cullen said earnestly. "I ought to have sent a telegram the minute I was free, but the truth is it just escaped my mind entirely. I wasn't at my best."

Mary was watching him with unreadable eyes and a pleasant smile. He forced himself to focus on the young attorney's face. "Just how badly have I inconvenienced you?" he asked. "Please don't think you have to be polite."

Jim shrugged. "I had me a pleasant ride down," he said. "Ain't every day I get the chance to be out and away from town. You got pretty country for riding 'round here."

Cullen moved to the small sideboard and picked up the decanter of whiskey. It was almost full: it did not look like his guest had taken more than the one helping. That was a good thing: a sober man was more likely to be reasonable and perhaps forgiving. "Can I top you up?" he asked.

"Please," said Secrest, holding out his glass. "It's fine stuff."

"A gift from my wife's father," said Cullen. "He has excellent taste in spirits." He poured himself a hearty measure and took a deep swallow. His palate was lifted at once by the smoky decadence of the whiskey and he had to restrain himself from closing his eyes in rapturous delight. He had not yet had occasion to sample his father-in-law's Christmas present. It was sumptuous.

The taste of the liquor steadied his nerves and set his courage. He smiled. "It's a pleasure to see you, Jim," he said. "I only wish it was under more convivial circumstances."

"I was expecting to visit you in a cell," said the other man cheerfully, wafting his hand at the tidy parlor. "This is plenty more convivial than that." He moved back to the chair and sat. "Now, I've come a long way to hear your story, and I think you ought to sit and tell me just what happened. Your lovely wife tells me it didn't go favorably for you."

"It didn't," said Cullen, his eyes darkening. He shifted the tumbler to his other hand and offered his palm to Mary. "Would you excuse us, my dear?" he asked. "I'm afraid all this will be dull for you to hear again."

Her lips tightened almost imperceptibly but did not lose their smile. "Of course, husband," she said with sweet formality. It would not sound amiss to a Southern ear, but it was so unlike Mary that it left him cold with dread. The gulf torn wide by last night's quarrel still yawned between them, and he could not close it now. "I shall just go and check on Gabe, I think. Our son, Mr. Secrest," she added as she took his hand rose smoothly to her feet. "He is not yet four years old, and it is his naptime."

"Ah, very nice, ma'am," said Secrest. "That's a fine age. I hope you will allow me the honor of meeting him?"

"Yes, of course," Mary promised clemently. "He'll breakfast with us; he usually does. You can meet him then. Excuse me, husband." She bowed her head courteously to Cullen and withdrew from the room, closing the door noiselessly behind her.

"Right, then," said Cullen, moving to perch on the edge of the sofa cushion. "I got to make recompense for the trouble you've gone to. You come out here to do me a kindness, and I've gone and shamed myself. What can I do to set this right?"

"You can start by telling me just what all this is about," said Secrest. "That telegram you sent raised more questions than it could possibly answer. Why'd they take you in for a misdemeanor, and why did you think you needed a lawyer? And an out-of-town lawyer at that. It don't make sense."

Cullen wanted to tell the man that it was none of his business now, and that he didn't much want to talk about it, but he could not. Secrest had come all this way on spec, knowing he wasn't going to be paid right off, and he had done so only to discover the case was resolved and his services no longer required. Cullen owed him a great deal for that effrontery, and the truth was the least of it. Taking another steadying sip of whiskey he began.

_*discidium*_

Bethel set the little dessert plates on the table, serving the guest first and then Mary. With so little notice any sort of pastry had been out of the question, but she had managed to produce a beautiful-looking peach cobbler served with fresh whipped cream. Cullen caught her eye and smiled his thanks as she retreated to the kitchen, and then picked up the decanter to refill Jim Secrest's glass. They were serving the Chateau Yquem, and Cullen had never been more grateful to his father-in-law for anything but his gracious understanding when he had admitted his intention to court Mary in earnest. He had nothing at all to offer his friend to take the sting off the whole debacle but this wine, and Bethel's extraordinary cooking.

And friend was the word for Jim Secrest, all right. He had listened carefully to the whole sordid story, pensive but without any hint of judgment in his eyes or demeanor. Cullen had omitted a few of the most awkward details that had no bearing on the case itself, and so spared his pride at least from admissions of being unable to pay his own fine or even to afford his board at the jail. But he had at last been able to unburden himself of the suspicion that the sheriff had done all of this at Sutcliffe's instigation and not from any genuine sense of justice, and Secrest had not tried to argue with him.

"And the Justice gave me until nightfall to pay my fine," Cullen had said, coming at last to the end of the story. "I went and fetched the money, and paid up at the jailhouse. By that time I was just so anxious to be home – with the lost work, and knowing my boy weren't well – that it went clear out of my mind I had sent for you in the first place."

He had expected words of irritation or perhaps absolution, but instead the younger man only nodded. "It sounds like a real mess," he said. "This neighbor of yours – Sutcliffe? You say he's got legal experience? Did he really phrase it like that: _if _your slave did this, or _if_ she did that?"

"If, when, I don't know," Cullen had replied. "The whole thing's a bit of a blur. I… I didn't sleep so well in jail. I weren't at my best."

Instead of criticizing him for this failing or offering pity, Secrest had only chuckled. "That's certainly understandable," he had said.

Now he was talking pleasantly with Mary, telling an animated tale about a pair of finches that had attempted to nest in the window of his office that spring. Mary, the perfect attentive hostess, did not even take her eyes off of him in order to use her fork. She had dressed for dinner in her blue tartan gown and hoop, and she was so beautiful that it was almost a torment to look at her. Cullen wanted to take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her, that he was sorry for the way he had spoken to her, that he would beg for her forgiveness if she wanted him to. He could not apologize for what he had said, for it had all been true, but he knew he never should have spoken those truths as cruelly as he had. If not for the presence of Jim Secrest, he would have told her that right this minute.

There was a soft sound from the doorway: Lottie clearing her throat. It was followed at once by three shallow coughs and a little sniffle. Cullen turned in his chair and Mary looked away from their guest. Jim's eyes moved but his head did not. He busied himself with taking another forkful of cobbler.

"What is it, Lottie?" asked Mary. The girl had her fingers curled around Gabe's hand. The little boy, whom she had been meant to be settling down for the night, bounced eagerly on bare feet so that the hem of his nightshirt bobbed. He was clearly bursting with the desire to speak, but had also obviously been instructed not to.

"Beg pardon, Missus," said Lottie, embarrassed but helpless. "Mist' Gabe, he wan' say g'night to his pappy."

"It's all right, Lottie," Cullen said. He pushed his chair back from the table and slapped his knee. "C'mere son, and say goodnight."

Gabe bolted out of Lottie's grasp, scrambling up into Cullen's lap. He was taken with another fit of coughing, this one longer than the first, and shook his head vigorously as it stopped. "Night, Pappy," he said, wheezing a little. "I's mighty glad you come—"

He spied Secrest and fell at once silent, eyes wide. He shuffled further up Cullen's leg and his hand crept out to take hold of the lapel of his father's waistcoat. Jim smiled at him.

"Hey there, li'l fella," he said. "You must be the young Mr. Bohannon."

"I's Gabe," the child yipped, then flushed a little, shyly, and hid his eyes against Cullen's shirtfront. Cullen planted a reassuring palm on his back.

"Gabe, this is Mr. Secrest," said Mary sweetly. "Mr. Secrest has come all the way from Scooba to help your pappy. He'll be spending the night."

"You'll have a chance to see his horse tomorrow, son," said Cullen. He had had the opportunity himself when the two of them had gone out to settle the stock for the night. Bastion was a fine-looking stallion. He lacked some of the Morgans' classical breeding, Bonnie's queenly grace and Pike's quiet charm, but he was a good horse and Cullen thought he would be excellent at a gallop. "You ain't never seen a real Tennessee Walker before."

Gabe burrowed closer, and Cullen grinned apologetically. "He ain't used to strangers," he explained. "Mary's brother and his wife were down here ten days before he'd even answer 'em back."

"Don't worry about it," Jim said affably. "I expect he ain't at his best right before bedtime, neither."

Gabe coughed again and scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. He hugged Cullen close, and Cullen reciprocated. It wasn't the sort of thing a man usually did in the presence of friends, but he didn't care. His boy wasn't well, and he'd been missing him. Offering him the comfort of a goodnight embrace was the right thing to do. Spurred on by this thought, he kissed the crown of his son's head. "You want me to come up and tuck you in?" he asked.

Gabe looked up at him, gray eyes filled with trust and love. "Nawsir," he said solemnly. "You gots to finish your supper 'fore it get cold, or Bet'l goin' scold you."

With this wise warning he wriggled down out of Cullen's lap and started back towards Lottie. Cullen schooled his amused grin and asked; "Ain't you goin' say goodnight to Mama?"

Gabe came running back, stopping by Mary's chair so she could bend to kiss him. He planted one of his own upon her cheek, made somewhat sticky by his running nose. "Goodnight, darling," Mary said. The radiant beauty of love was in her eyes as she sent him trotting back to the door. Lottie took his hand and curtsied as neatly as any city-trained nursemaid, and led the little boy off towards the stairs.

Mary wiped her cheek delicately with her napkin and smiled at Jim. "You must excuse him," she said. "We do not keep a very formal house, and he was distressed to have his father away from home for so much of the week."

"No need to apologize, Mrs. Bohannon," said Secrest. "He's a handsome little man. You must be very proud."

"I do wish you would call me Mary," she said. "You've been so kind. To come all this way on the strength of one evening's acquaintance is simply extraordinary."

"I was wondering, ma'am, whether I might impose on your hospitality one more night," Jim ventured, setting down his fork and folding his napkin over the empty plate. "The thing of it is I'd like to go into Meridian tomorrow and see about getting a copy of your husband's court proceedings."

"I don't understand," said Mary. She glanced questioningly at Cullen, but he was as puzzled as she was. "Why would you want that?"

"Well, the way he tells it there's some things I was wondering about," said Jim. "I don't want to offer an opinion without seeing the transcript, but if I can stay another day I'd like to. I don't believe he was fairly dealt with, and I'm just not going to be satisfied until I have the truth of the matter."

Cullen very nearly had to bite his tongue to keep from whooping in vindication. He had half believed, or feared, that it was only some strange paranoia that had left him feeling that he had been ill-used. If Secrest suspected the same, he wasn't mad. "You'd do that?" he asked. "Take a look at the record and give me an opinion? A legal opinion?" Belatedly he asked; "What'll that cost me?"

"Fifty cents for a copy of the proceedings is usual," said Secrest. "Unless prices are different in Lauderdale County."

Cullen felt his color rise. "I meant for your opinion," he said. "On top of whatever it is I owe you for dragging you down here on false pretenses."

"Two dollars is my ordinary fee for a consultation," said Jim. "I ain't appearing in court, so you save another three there. Since I rode down and you're putting me up there's no travel expenses, though I expect I owe you something for the board: I wouldn't get a feast like this at no eating-house. A dollar and a half for the consult, fifty cents for the copy. You ought to get a copy regardless; if this neighbor's as malicious as you say he might try to make trouble later on."

"Two dollars, then," Cullen said hoarsely. The way the man put it, it didn't sound like a cut-rate or anything that might be construed as charity. Bethel had indeed put on an extraordinary meal, and no doubt would do the same tomorrow. Still, two dollars seemed low. Doc charged the same for a call, and he only had to come six miles. Then again, maybe lawyers came cheaper than doctors.

Jim nodded. "Payable the end of November, like your telegram proposed," he said. "Hard time of year to pay up-front. Besides, it'll give me an excuse to see you again. I've been thinking I got to get you up north for a little hunting."

Cullen was surprised into a grin. "I'd like that," he said. "But what is it you think you're going to find in the court record?"

"Maybe nothing," said Jim; "but I'd like to look. You said the Justice of the Peace was young. Inexperienced, maybe? Likely to be intimidated by having one of the county planters descending on his courtroom?"

Cullen frowned. He had not considered this. George was a quiet sort, timid and softhearted. Though he certainly would not be swayed by bribes or favors, he might have been nervous at the bench that day. Cullen certainly had been, and he was used to Sutcliffe's officious manner. "Maybe," he said. "I don't like to think it."

"Hmm. Anyhow, it don't do no harm to look. I'll be able to ride out to the Ives place for dinner: be good to catch up with the boys, and it'll spare you having to feed me one meal at least, Miss Mary." He smiled and drained the last of his wine. Then he exhaled contentedly. "If you'll excuse me, though, ma'am, I had an early morning and a long ride. What about this guest bedroom of yours?"

_*discidium*_

With their guest settled for the night and the scant hours until Cullen's watch in the barn rapidly slipping away, the two Bohannons retreated into their bedroom. Mary undressed quickly, all too conscious of her husband's eyes upon her as she did so. All afternoon while she had tried to make Jim Secrest comfortable, and to keep the house running smoothly, and to get Gabe fed and bathed, and to make herself presentable for dinner, she had had only one thing on her mind. It had come to her, strangely enough, in the midst of the conversation about Bastion's saddle training. There was nothing in the lawyer's story itself that should have prompted the thought, but it had come none the less. And, having come, it had proved impossible to ignore.

She slipped her pantalets off beneath the shelter of her nightgown, and folded them carefully. Drawing out the seat of her dressing table, she settled before the mirror and adjusted the candle. Behind her, Cullen was hanging up his good silk waistcoat with uncommon care. Deftly Mary plucked the hairpins from her tresses and let the auburn mass cascade over her shoulders and down her back. She picked up the silver brush and began to stroke through her hair, all the while watching Cullen in the mirror.

He had removed his boots in the front hall, and so it was a simple thing to step out of his neat striped trousers. He unbuttoned the fine cotton shirt that Bethel had brought him to change into, and slipped out of it. His underthings had been clean, too, but he had put them on a dirty body and they were stained with sweat and fresh, dark blossoms of tobacco tar. As she twined her hair into a plait Mary watched as he lifted his undershirt stiffly, flinching as a cramp tore visibly across his floating ribs. He made no sound, doubtless believing his pain unobserved. There was not more than a week's work left in the tobacco, and then this torment would be over until topping time next year, but it still rent at Mary's heart to know how her husband suffered with the work. Exhausted and strained, wracked with remorse over what had happened to Meg; was it any wonder he had lashed out when goaded?

He stepped out of his drawers, naked now with his back towards her, and struggled into his nightshirt. Mary reached the bottom of the braid and tied it off with a scrap of linen tape. This required her to take her eyes from the mirror, and she did not look at it again as she stood. She turned, startled to find that Cullen had closed all but the last yard between them. He stood hesitantly just beyond her reach, her cherry-colored dressing gown in his hand. His face was impassive, but his eyes were not. They were filled with something she could not quite identify.

"What's this?" she asked softly, nodding at the garment.

He shifted uneasily and his mouth twitched, but his gaze did not leave hers. "I thought… I mean, ain't you going to sleep in Gabe's room again?" he mumbled.

"We have a guest," said Mary. "It wouldn't be fitting."

"We got a sick child," said Cullen. "That's a likely enough excuse."

For a moment Mary's irritation blazed. All afternoon she had thought of nothing but how they might reconcile – why they _should_ reconcile, whatever the hurts of last night. And all _he_ was thinking about was how he could tell her she was not welcome in his bed.

But then at last she recognized the curious blend of emotions in his quicksilver eyes as they glittered in the candlelight. Above the shadows of weariness they were brimming with a raw hurt mingled somehow with fragile, frightened hope. He was not trying to drive her from his bed. This was the only way he knew how to ask her to stay.

She closed the distance between them with two quick, barefoot steps. She took hold of the dressing gown and flung it behind her, over the stool she had just abandoned. She longed to touch him, but she could not. The time was not yet right.

"How do you know so much?" she asked.

The bewilderment now infused into the other two sentiments made the blend very nearly heartbreaking. Mary's breath caught in her throat.

"What?" Cullen gasped shallowly, unable to articulate anything else.

"How do you know so much about the manumission laws?" Mary breathed. "You rattled them off so quickly, so faultlessly. How do you know so much about them?"

The fear and the puzzlement disappeared. Only the hope remained, tremulous. The right corner of his mouth curled up in a tiny ghost of a smile. In that moment he was once again the dashing young man made suddenly bashful by her sister's departure from the stately parlor in her parents' home. "I studied up," he said shyly.

"When?" asked Mary.

His hand crept up and caught a stray lock of hair that had slipped free from her plait. He twined it around the tip of his finger and hooked it gently behind her ear. "Spring of '56," he whispered. "First time you asked me to free them."

Mary's arms found their way around his neck, drawing him down so that she could kiss him. His weathered lips were coarse and warm against her smooth, cool ones. He smelled of clean sweat and homemade soap. His hand settled upon the small of her back and he drew her near to him. She could feel his love and his longing, and her own welcomed it.

"That's what I thought," she murmured. They would have to be very quiet indeed.


	48. Hindsight

**Chapter Forty-Eight: Hindsight**

Cullen woke in a haze of inexplicable contentment. He was lying in that perfect spot in the very center of the bed where the ropes were almost completely level even under his weight and that of his sleeping wife. Mary was lying spooned against him, her silken braid curled in the crevice between their pillows. Cullen's arm rested upon her side, his palm upon her belly rising and falling with the serene rhythm of her breath. He bowed his head against the nape of her neck, drinking in the scent of her skin. He knew he must have woken in anticipation of his watch in the tobacco kiln, but he could not quite bear to tear himself away from her. Not yet.

There was a draft in the room from the broken window. Something had to be done about that, but the truth was that with the harvest so pressing Cullen had no time to think about, much less resolve, such a small thing. The drowsy satiated comfort dissolved in a whirlwind of worries. The tobacco, at least one more pass from finished and still needing to be cured and packed, shipped and sold after that; the yams to be brought in before the first frost; the potatoes that would need digging just after it; the cornfields to be plowed; cordwood to be cut and laid by; roofs to check and walls to chink before winter's chill set in; the fences in need of whitewashing; and all of it to be done within the next few weeks. He found himself almost longing for the high days of summer when the work, though ceaseless, was not so urgent.

Groaning softly he rolled onto his back, careful not to tug the bedclothes off of his wife. He slipped one foot out of bed and sat up gingerly. His back was a labyrinth of aches and deeper, pernicious pains that he had almost learned to ignore before a week out of the fields had reminded him what it was to live free of them. He lingered for a moment on the edge of the bed, scrubbing with the heels of his hands at crusted eyes. It took more determination than he would have thought he could muster to get to his feet and shuffle to the chair where his clothes were waiting. His nightshirt was twisted and rucked up uncomfortably, and it would have been a relief to strip it off save that the coolness of the room made his body break out all at once in gooseflesh. He had to fix that damned window. He couldn't let his wife sleep in a cold bedroom: Mary mustn't take ill.

There was an old wool blanket in the bottom of the closet, and when he had dragged on his undergarments Cullen retrieved it. He shook it out and moved to the bed, spreading it gently over Mary's sleeping form. As he bent to tuck the covers closer to her she stirred. Her face turned upward and her eyelashes fluttered in the light of the full moon filtering through the curtains.

"So soon?" she murmured drowsily, a small and regretful smile touching lips made dark with the night's pleasures.

"'Fraid so," whispered Cullen. "You going to be all right without a host at breakfast?"

"Yes," said Mary. Her arm found its way out of the nest of blankets and she stroked his forearm. "I wish you would take the time to sit and eat with us, though. You had so little rest yesterday."

"I had me five days of rest," Cullen said. "Don't you worry about me."

"But I do," she sighed. "I always do."

This admission stung him. He didn't want her to fret for him. She had worries enough making do with what little he could provide for the running of the household, caring for his child, and struggling to make peace with her conscience in the wake of what had happened to Meg. He opened his mouth, unsure what to say to put her at ease, but was interrupted by a sound from the next room. It took a moment to recognize it, and when he did he raised his head as though he could see through the connecting wall into the nursery. Gabe was coughing.

"He'll be all right in a moment," Mary said, but as the fit rattled on through another heartbeat she pushed herself up onto one elbow. "Perhaps I ought to check on him."

"Let me," said Cullen. "You lie back down and stay warm."

He hurried to the door and slipped out into the corridor, leaving it ajar so Mary could hear. His bare feet skimmed over the floorboards, light and almost soundless despite his fatigue. He pushed open the door to his son's room, expecting to walk in upon a prone child coughing in his sleep.

Instead Gabe was sitting up in the middle of the bed, arms locked straight and hands pressed deep into the narrow feather tick to brace himself as his whole body shook with the paroxysms of the fit. His mouth was a strained oval, the tongue butting up against his pearly baby teeth as he coughed again and again. His eyes were wide and watering, and he did not seem able to catch a breath between.

Hastily Cullen went to him, crossing the small room with four swift strides and sitting down upon the edge of the bed. He gripped Gabe's right shoulder with one hand, while the other moved 'round to pat his back as he had seen Mary do. "All right, son. You're all right," he said as calmly and consolingly as he knew how. "Just take a breath now. That's it. Take a breath."

Gabe tried, the effort of drawing in a thin, wheezing tendril of air sending a shudder through his ribs so that his head bucked. The coughs, one swift upon the tail of the next, came out in a harsh string and terminated suddenly in silence that was broken when the boy took in a sharp, sundering gasp. Startled, Cullen almost drew back his hands in consternation before remembering himself. Gabe gasped again, less urgently this time, and then coughed once more, feebly, and whimpered.

"There," Cullen soothed. "That's my brave boy. All over now."

"I couldn' bree'd, Pappy," Gabe huffed, tugging his hands up off the mattress and looking from one to the other. "I woked up an' I couldn' bree'd."

He managed to free one leg from the bedclothes and got it under him, pushing himself up and crawling into Cullen's lap. Cullen adjusted his hold from the boy's shoulder to his waist, still patting his back as if he feared the cough would start up again. Gabe huddled close against his chest, tears squeezing out of tightly closed eyes. His breathing grew less labored as he settled in his father's arms.

"I know it was scary, son," murmured Cullen. "You got to cough before you can get better." His arm slipped under Gabe's bottom and he stood up, maintaining the awkward position of his hand so that he could keep the small body curled against his ribs. With his other hand he reached to gather up the rumpled bedclothes. "I need to get out and relieve Elijah in the barn. You ready to go back to sleep?"

Gabe shook his head so vigorously that his chin bounced off of Cullen's breastbone. "Don' go, Pappy," he begged.

"I got to," said Cullen, regretting the necessity bitterly. Such things were considered women's business, true enough, but if Gabe wanted him he ought to be able to stay and comfort him. He would have been able to, in a well-ordered world. Or on a well-ordered plantation, and that was his failing, too. "You want to go in and lie down with Mama?"

"I wants to stay right here wid you," Gabe mumbled plaintively, but he made no protest as Cullen carried him out into the corridor and through to the big bedroom. He wondered too late if it would do the child harm to be in the chill of the broken window. But surely under the blankets with Mary to warm him he'd be all right. The night air might creep in, but most of it had to be kept at bay.

Mary was sitting up, waiting for him with the bedclothes over one shoulder. She lifted the corner of the sheet so that Cullen could set their son on the mattress. He scooted close to his mother at once and planted his head on her pillow. "Are you all right, lovey?" Mary asked, stroking his head and lying down again beside him.

Cullen drew up the blankets smoothly, and tucked the ends under the mattress. "Got coughing and couldn't stop," he said. "Couldn't hardly get a breath in. Think I should ride for the doctor?"

Mary shook her head. "The cough is always worst at the very end of a cold," she said. "It means you're getting better, darling. Remember? Bethel said so. Your nose is hardly running at all anymore."

"Nope," said Gabe. "Ain't runnin'. I gots a cough."

It had sounded worse than an ordinary cough to Cullen, but he did not say this. He didn't know much about childhood ailments, and he wasn't about to question Bethel's judgment on the matter. Or Mary's either, come to that. She was the boy's mother, and in any case she had been coping with this sickness all week while he was far away. She knew better than he how Gabe had been sounding. Swallowing his niggling unease, he moved back to the chair and pulled on his trousers.

"Then he'll be all right?" he asked. "Should I fetch you up the bottle of soothing syrup?"

Mary shook her head, her plait slipping off her shoulder and falling over the edge of the coverlet. Only Gabe's nose and eyes could be seen over the top of the blankets. He was blinking sleepily, his mouth once more its accustomed little bow. Looking at him now, the harsh stretch of his lips over a mouth wide with coughing seemed almost like a bad dream. "I gave him the last dose before his nap," she said. "There isn't any left."

Cullen grimaced painfully at this. He could not spare the time to go into town to fetch more, even if he could have spared the money to buy it. But neither could he let his boy go without medicine, if it would comfort him in his recovery. "You could ask and see if Jim wouldn't mind picking up a bottle while he's in Meridian," he said. "Give him a dollar to pay for it, and fifty cents for the copy of them documents."

"I don't think we need it," Mary said. "Bethel swears that blackberry root tincture and sorghum works just as well, and he must be very nearly through it." She felt the child's forehead with the back of her hand. "Still a mite feverish, but he's eating heartily."

There was nothing to be said to this: Cullen had to defer to her opinion. It was so far outside the realm of his experience that he would do more harm than good in disagreeing with her. "Give Jim the money for the transcript anyhow," he said. "Hanged if I'll have him out-of-pocket over this mess."

_*discidium*_

It was nearly nine o'clock, hours after sunset, when Cullen finally came in from his long day of work. Mr. Secrest had returned from Meridian two hours earlier, and had supped with Mary upon yet another of Bethel's extraordinary and resourceful meals. It was fortunate that the young attorney was so pleasant to talk to, for otherwise Mary might easily have given offence. Her mind was on other matters. Gabe's cough had persisted all day, worse than before, and he had been quiet and subdued. Bethel had dosed him several times with her homemade remedy, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Soothing syrup hadn't either, really, but it had been a comfort to Mary to know she was doing _something_ for her child, and she found that comfort sorely missed. Even now, with her boy fast asleep in his bed upstairs, she wondered whether she had been wrong. She could have asked her guest to run that simple little errand, but she had been thinking of the money. They had so little money left – none at all, really, since what they had on hand Cullen intended to give to Doctor Whitehead at the earliest opportunity. The bottle of medicine had seemed like an extravagance.

Her concerns about Gabe were coupled with her worries for his father. There was a drawn look to Cullen's face now that had not been there before his stint in prison. The strains and hardships of the last week had clawed away at his already-worn constitution. It was such a grueling regimen: broken nights and long days filled with toil and pain. Mary wondered how anyone could keep it up for as long as Cullen and the others had. Meg was once more taking her turns in the barn, and still putting in full days in the field. Today Elijah had been in the yams alone, for Bethel could not be spared from cooking for the guest to relieve Lottie from the watch on the fires. The curing process would drag on for weeks after the last of the tobacco was picked, and with it the loss of sleep. It was a wonder they were not all ill, and Mary wondered how long that could possibly last.

When she heard the familiar sounds of Cullen's arrival in the kitchen, Mary had to restrain herself from abandoning Mr. Secrest to check on him. The day had been cool but bright, and so she hoped he would not be suffering too much from the twin evils of cold air and sodden clothes. She intended to keep a sharp watch for the signs of tobacco sickness returning, but so far there had been none – though it had only been three days since he had been back at the work.

Finally heavy footsteps sounded in the entryway and Cullen appeared at the parlor door. His eyes were shadowed and his shoulders stooped, but he smiled for her and grinned at Secrest.

"Good evening," he said. "I got to apologize for coming in so late. We had to sort a batch of leaves to free up some space in the drying shed."

"By lamplight?" Mary asked, puzzled. Ordinarily that work was done in full sun, so the imperfections in the harvest could be readily spotted.

Cullen shrugged. "Ain't no other time to do it," he said. "Every minute of daylight we got to be in the field. Pretty soon someone will have to stop picking to help with the sweet potatoes."

"It's a wonder you can manage a place this size with only five slaves," said Jim Secrest amiably. "You must have a knack for organizing men."

"I wouldn't go that far," said Cullen. He gripped the arm of the sofa and eased himself down next to Mary. Though his jaw tightened and his lips pressed together he could not quite stifle a moan of relief as he took his weight off his tired legs. She smiled sweetly for him, longing to let him lie down with his head in her lap but unable even to think of such things in the presence of a visitor. "It's just a matter of doing what's got to be done."

"And seeing how best to do it," Secrest said. "You must work as hard with your mind as you do with your hands."

Cullen's eyes flared briefly at this, and Mary watched him warily. But he only tugged at the cufflink of his good shirt and snorted softly. Bethel had managed to get him washed and changed, presentable for company, but the dark stains on his hands and the blackened nailbeds, and the dogged weary look upon his handsome face betrayed the truth of his circumstances. She wondered whether Secrest could see these things, or whether the merry obliviousness of young men sheltered Cullen's pride from his friend's insight.

"How'd you make out in Meridian?" Cullen asked, shifting his body a little as he tried to find a comfortable position on the slick horsehair cushion. "Anything useful in that paper?"

He nodded to the three pages lying folded on the small table next to Secrest's elbow. He had brought the document in with him, but had neither looked at it nor made mention of it to Mary. She had not asked, for such things were the purview of the male world and so outside her realm of influence. Desperate though she was to know if there was anything in the court record that might help Cullen, she had kept her questions to herself. Now, however, she rose.

"Please don't get up," she said as the two gentlemen shifted to do the same. "I'm just going over to my chair: there are letters from home I have not had the opportunity to read, Mr. Secrest, and the two of you can discuss your business without the bother of entertaining a lady."

"Ain't no bother, Miss Mary," said Jim.

Despite her words, Cullen stood up and offered her his hand, escorting her to the seat by the window where she ordinarily sat with her fancywork. Mary had brought Jeremiah's letters from the dining room, and she set them in her lap as Cullen lit the lamp on the wall above her. He adjusted the wick to emit a bright but cozy glow and let his hand rest briefly on her arm just below the shoulder. Their gaze met, and despite their exhaustion his grey eyes were gentle and filled with love. Then Cullen returned to the couch, taking up the place that Mary had vacated so that he was nearer to Secrest.

Mary broke the seal of the letter posted from Philadelphia and unfolded the single sheet, but though she looked at it she did not trouble to bring the words into focus. Her ears were perked for the conversation about to begin by the cheerfully-crackling hearth.

"I've given it a looking-over," said Secrest. He picked up the papers and smoothed them, shuffling to the second page. "I'm afraid you may not like what I have to say."

"The truth might not be popular, but it's derned important," Cullen argued. "I asked for your opinion as a professional, and that's what I want."

"Well, to begin you really ought to have told them you had made arrangements for counsel," said Jim. "Then the Justice of the Peace would have been obliged to arrest the proceedings so that you could exercise your right to representation."

"I know. George told me," said Cullen. "But if I'd done that I'd still be in jail waiting to be heard. I had to get home. I'm better off with the whole thing behind me."

"I don't know if I would agree with that," the younger man ventured. From the corner of her eye Mary could see him glance uneasily up at her husband. "The truth is that the way this reads it looks like you really could have done with my help. There were a couple of places where a lawyer might have taken up for you, and…" He moved restlessly in the chair. "I don't know quite how to put this, Cullen, but what was your state of mind going into this hearing?"

"How do you mean?" The question was innocuous enough, but Cullen's voice tightened just enough that Mary knew his eyes were now cold and guarded.

"Well, you must have been flustered, pulled into court all of a sudden like that," Secrest hedged. "Maybe a little nervous, uncomfortable? That's how most people feel in the dock."

"Maybe a little," Cullen admitted. "What's it matter?"

"Were you angry?" said Jim. "I only ask because right about here, where you say 'Now wait just a minute, what the hell else could I have done?'… well, that looks an awful lot like something a man says when he's angry."

"Yeah, I was angry. They dragged me up all of a sudden, and then they were saying I should have made arrangements for Meg to appear in court. There weren't time to do it, but they said I should have asked anyhow."

Secrest nodded. "There's a responsibility under the law to do everything you reasonably can to meet the conditions of the court. Under these here circumstances it ain't much, but you could have asked if it was possible. The judge was within his rights to note prejudice. But that ain't the real problem."

Mary realized her gaze was drifting off of the letter, and forced it back. She thought she knew what he was going to say, and she was worried about how Cullen would take it.

"The court ain't a place for a man to lose his temper," said Secrest. "That's one good reason to have a lawyer take up for you. Gives you someone to speak up calmly. And someone to look out for tricks a man can't spot when he's warm under the collar."

"What sort of tricks?" asked Cullen. His voice was grim but level. He had taken no offence at what Mary had feared he might interpret as criticism. "Apart from the obvious, I mean: Sheriff knew that George would bring me up early, and tipped off Sutcliffe so he'd be there while I was on the back foot."

"It certainly looks that way," Jim admitted. "But you can't prove it, and in any case there ain't no law against it. All you'd do is make trouble for the Justice of the Peace for changing your court date."

"I don't want that," said Cullen. "He was just trying to do me a kindness; get me home earlier. Heck, he didn't even know it was me until I got called up."

Secrest hummed noncommittally, and Mary could not help but look up at his face again. His brows were furrowed pensively, and his thin lips pressed tight. Cullen, his back towards her, straightened a little on the sofa. The sinews of his neck were taut, and his grip on the armrest unyielding.

"Why don't you tell me what you mean?" he pressed. "What sort of tricks?"

"Here." Secrest turned the page and pointed at a line midway down. "Right here."

Cullen leaned forward and exhaled through his nostrils. "My shorthand's rusty," he said. "What's it say?"

"Mr. Sutcliffe's testimony," said Secrest. "He admits he had an arrangement with your father regarding the woman visiting her husband, which made him an authority by proxy and responsible for her behavior while she was doing it."

"So she wouldn't have been going at large," said Cullen. "But she wasn't… Meg and her Peter, they weren't…" He shifted uncomfortably and glanced over his shoulder at Mary. She tried to avert her eyes, but not quickly enough. Cullen's color deepened and he turned back to Secrest. "He said Meg was busy with other things outside the agreement, so he weren't responsible."

"I would have argued he was," Secrest said. "That because she was on his land at a time he should have known to expect her – and indeed clearly did expect her, as he sent his overseers to find her – his supervision extended over her regardless of what she was doing. Of course," he added, sitting back and stretching his legs on the hearthrug; "he still could have tried to argue that she was agitating, or trying to educate his Negroes, but the judge seemed to dismiss that idea all right."

"Of course he dismissed it: it was outrageous," Cullen muttered. He scrubbed his palm over his beard. "Would that have made a difference in the judgment? If I'd been smart enough to make that argument?"

"It might have. But there's something else, too. What you said last night is in the record, too." Secrest pointed again. "Right here: 'However, if Mr. Bohannon gave her permission to leave his land', and again here; 'if she did all this, Your Honor'. You see?"

Cullen shook his head. Mary did not see, either. She didn't think that the attorney had read enough of the transcript to make his point. With a tremendous effort she focused once more upon the paper in her hand, but Jeremiah's tidy clerk's cursive seemed as loose and cryptic as the shorthand on the paper Secrest held. She could not read it and did not much want to.

"So?" said Cullen.

"He gives an account of what your slave was doing, but he doesn't testify to it," said Jim. "He says _if _she was doing this, and this, and this, _then_ she is guilty of going at large and you are guilty of letting her do it. He doesn't state firmly that she did any of those things. The prosecution – the sheriff in this case – doesn't meet the burden of proof that the woman was doing anything but what was expected."

"I don't understand," Cullen said. "If that's so, why didn't George say something?"

"It's possible he didn't notice," Jim said. "A Justice of the Peace ain't a lawyer, and a young one can't be expected to know all the tricks. It ain't his place to make the case for the accused, either. But right there you should have argued. He said _if_, not _when_ or _since_, and the only reason a lawyer would do that is if he couldn't prove she done any of it. It means there weren't a white man to bear witness. One of his Negroes must have been spying, and told him what your woman was doing. A darky can't testify against a white man, so all Sutcliffe had was hearsay. Hearsay ain't hard evidence: he couldn't prove she went at large, so he just talked as if he could."

Cullen was on the very edge of the cushion now, leaning forward. From the young man's suddenly wary demeanor Mary knew the light that was blazing in her husband's eyes. "But that ain't legal!" he said. "I could appeal. I could get the judgment overturned. Hell, I might even be able to make a complaint to the bar against Sutcliffe! He don't practice, but he's got his license. That ain't ethical practice, what he done there."

"It ain't," agreed Secrest; "but I would strongly advise against an appeal. You'd almost certainly lose it."

Cullen made a noise of disgust deep in his throat. "But you just said—"

"That the testimony Mr. Sutcliffe gave did not meet the burden of proof," said Jim, remarkably calm despite his discomfiture. He was a brave man, thought Mary. Not many boys his age would have dared to broach this ugly subject with Cullen, much less continued to correct him so long. "It didn't. But what you said next sure did. The minute you admitted to trusting your woman's judgment and expecting her to do what she thinks best, the case was clear and there weren't no other way for the Justice to rule. I… I'm sorry, Cullen. Mr. Bohannon. If you'd had someone to speak for you instead it might not have happened that way, but as it stands now…"

"They tied the noose, but I'm the one stuck my head in it," Cullen muttered. The strength went out of his back and he sagged against the sofa. The hand that had been clutching the armrest rose to cradle his temple. "I let 'em get the better of me. Me and my temper."

"I'm afraid so," said the younger man. He looked very tired, and his eyes were soft with regret. "I'm sorry. I wish I had better news. I wish there was something I could do. If I'd been in court I could have argued. At the very least I could have stopped you from interrupting over and over again with angry outbursts… you got to know that hurt your case, and quite likely contributed to the higher fine. There's a price to pay for temper, especially in a court of law."

"Sure there is," groaned Cullen. "Hell, I knew they were getting under my skin; trying to do it. But I just couldn't stop myself. Thirty-five dollars." He shook his head tiredly. "And there ain't nothing I can do about it. Can't even call Sutcliffe to task."

"You could still write to the Mississippi Bar," suggested Jim. "What he did wasn't illegal, and he wasn't there in a professional capacity, but it's still immoral. Unethical, like you said. Frowned upon. Ungentlemanly."

Mary's throat closed at these words. She stirred, wanting to speak, but it was not her place. These were matters for men: she could not offer an opinion now, not in front of the guest. Secrest straightened the papers and folded them, then set them back on the table. "You'll want to keep hold of those," he said, getting to his feet. "I'm sorry I couldn't do more; I truly am."

Cullen shook his head. "Don't matter," he said. "Don't matter now."

_*discidium*_

Secrest bade them both goodnight, and Cullen lit a candle for him. He stood by the fire and watched as his guest left the room, listening for the sound of his feet upon the stairs and then overhead. When the door to the front bedroom closed up above, Cullen let out a heavy sigh. He might have been wracked with rage, against Sutcliffe and Brannan and especially himself, but he was just too tired for it. It was past ten o'clock. He had been awake for almost twenty hours straight. Every bone in his body ached, and the muscles that clung to them seemed to be doing it more out of habit than design. Dimly he wondered whether he would be able to get out of his riding boots, or whether he ought to just try to make an earnest effort to reach the couch before he fell asleep where he stood.

There was a rustle of starched cotton skirts, and suddenly Mary was beside him. For a bewildered moment he wondered where she had come from and how she had known he could not drag himself up to bed without outside encouragement, and then he remembered she had been in the room the whole time.

"You can't do it," she whispered, curling her arm around his and looking up earnestly into his eyes. "You mustn't."

"Do what?" he asked blearily. Did she know he had been toying with the idea of stretching out on the sofa with his boots still on?

"Write to the bar and complain about Mr. Sutcliffe's conduct," Mary said. "He'd find out; they'd inform him. He'd come after you again. He'd come after you, Cullen, and next time it might not be just a fine and four days in prison. He knows how to goad you. He might do anything. You mustn't try it. You mustn't even think of it."

He turned slowly, drawing away from her with his right side while his left hand reached for her arm. Slowly, almost drunkenly, he shook his head. "I ain't goin' live in fear," he said. "I ain't goin' let that man dictate what I can and can't do. Jim says I got grounds for a complaint: I intend to make it. But not now." Fatigue was clawing at him, and the dim knowledge that tomorrow would be, if not so long a day, certainly as hard filled him with a hollow despair. "Not tonight."

He let out the weary sigh that was weighting his chest. "How's my boy?" he asked.

"He's been coughing all day," said Mary; "but his appetite is good. Bethel swears that so long as he's eating well there's nothing to worry about. He must be on the mend."

Cullen made a small sound of assent. That was something to be thankful for. Mary still had her brother's letters in her hand, one open and the other still sealed. "What's Jeremiah got to say? They get home all right?"

Mary looked down at the papers, surprised. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I… I didn't read it."

"Eavesdropping," Cullen mumbled.

She looked up at him sharply, a challenge in her eyes, and then smiled in gentle chagrin. "Perhaps a little," she said.

"Then you know you married a fool who lets his temper get the better of him," said Cullen. "You would have been better off to marry a wise man instead. Someone like Secrest."

"Never," said Mary tenderly. "I'm quite accustomed to your temper, Mr. Bohannon. It doesn't distress me in the least."

There was something he had to say to her. Something that had eluded him in the bliss of her forgiveness the previous evening. Cullen reached to stroke her hair, tugging loose one tendril from the wing pinned over her ear. "Mary, the other night," he said. "I never should have took that tone with you. It weren't right. You weren't to know how it really is in Mississippi, and you needed telling, but I never should have told you like that."

"No," she said, her voice gentle and her eyes filled with love. "No, you shouldn't. But I shouldn't have tried to lay the blame for all the ills of the world on you, either. You're a good man, and I know you try your best to live a good life. This is just such a hard place to do it."

Cullen swallowed painfully. There was a tickle far back in his throat, and his hand shook a little as he moved it back down to her arm. "I guess maybe you wish I'd sold up and settled in New York?" he asked.

"You would have been miserable in New York," said Mary. She stretched to kiss him lightly on the lips. "I know you aren't happy just now, either, with all the cares you have to carry. But I believe you could be happy here. We could be happy together, with our family and… and our people, whom I still hope we can free someday when the hard times are past."

He looked at her, still the beacon of hope despite all their troubles, and he wished they could stand like this forever, entwined together and bearing one another up despite worries and weariness and work. "When the hard times are past," he murmured. His eyes closed. "Mary? You ever think 'bout having another baby?"

Her breath caught and she stiffened beneath his fingers. Warily he looked at her, and her eyes were glassy and very bright. "Always," she said.

Cullen found that he could summon a small, tired smile for her. "We ought to keep trying," he said. "Then someday…"

"Someday," Mary agreed, blinking away unshed tears. She twisted, drawing close to him. Arm in arm they moved to snuff the lamps, and then stepped into the entryway. Cullen reached to light a candle, but his hand was so unsteady with exhaustion that he could not make wick and match meet. Wordlessly, without scorn or pity, Mary plucked the little wooden stick from his fingers and finished the task on his behalf. She carried the candle as they ascended the stairs, and when he stumbled at the top she held him close. Her slender but sturdy form bore him up and lent him the strength to shuffle down the corridor to the bedroom. She knelt to pull off the well-polished boots he had donned after his held-over supper, and helped him with his collar studs. Then when they were both clad in their nightclothes she led him to his side of the bed and drew the covers over his aching body. He managed to elude slumber only long enough to feel her warmth settle beside him on the feather tick.


	49. The Next Blow

**Chapter Forty-Nine: The Next Blow**

Mary stood at the top of the veranda steps, smiling placidly as she watched Cullen bid farewell to their guest. The handsome Tennessee Walker was tacked and ready, Jim Secrest's carpetbag hooked onto the saddle and spoiling the sleek silhouette somewhat. Cullen and Jim were talking quietly enough that although they were not fifteen yards from her Mary could not make out a single word. Cullen had lingered at the house past dawn to take breakfast with his friend and to see him off. The conversation, at first trivial and convivial, had grown steadily more intense as the meal went on: Cullen had questioned Secrest extensively on the subject of submitting a formal complaint to the Mississippi Bar. Mary had busied herself in helping Gabe with his breakfast, wishing fervently that she possessed some means of dissuading Cullen from this course. She understood his desire to fight on, but she feared for him. He was within his rights to report the misfeasance perpetrated against him, but it would only serve to further antagonize his powerful neighbor. Mary feared what Mr. Sutcliffe might try if he were pressed any further.

Now Mr. Secrest was frowning and shaking his head. Cullen nodded insistently as he reached into the pocket of his gabardine waistcoat and seized the younger man's hand. He pressed something into it, and Jim looked down, lips pursing briefly. He fumbled in his own pocket and brought out a coin that sparkled in the early morning sun. Cullen took it, and clapped Secrest companionably on the shoulder. They shook hands and Cullen stepped back so the other man could mount his steed.

"You ride safe, now," he said. "Watch out for our north fence: there's a dip on the far side."

"Thank you for the warning," said Secrest. "Listen, you ever need my services again you just send word, all right? I'm proud you wanted me, and I'm only sorry I couldn't do more."

"Yeah, well, I guess it just weren't meant to be," said Cullen with a grim little shake of his head. "Still I thank you for coming all the way down here. Sorry again 'bout the wasted trip."

"It weren't no waste," Jim promised. "You've been mighty hospitable; you and your lovely wife." He smiled at Mary, tipping his hat, and she inclined her head. "I meant what I said, too: you got to come up and visit."

"I will," Cullen assured him. "Just as soon as I got a day or two to spare."

Jim nodded and grinned, reined Bastion up and turned to pass the gate. He stopped, removed his hat entirely, and bowed over the saddle. "Good day, Miss Mary," he said. "Thanks again."

"And thank you," Mary said. "Safe journey."

With that the young man replaced his hat, spurred his horse and took off at a canter, circling the house and disappearing past the dooryard. Cullen came up the steps, unbuttoning his waistcoat as he went.

"He'll save himself a couple of miles cutting north across our land," he said. "Washburn don't mind the occasional rider, neither; 'specially with the cotton in."

Mary had more pressing questions than any concerning Secrest's homeward route. "You paid him after all?" she asked.

Cullen nodded, not meeting her eyes. "Figured it's best that way," he said. "Bad enough being beholden to Doc, but I got no claim on Jim. Nothing ruins a new friendship quicker 'n a bad debt."

"It isn't a bad debt until you fail to meet it," Mary murmured.

The look he shot at her chilled her to the core, and left her momentarily paralyzed as he trudged into the house. She caught up to him just inside the parlor door. He flung his waistcoat over the back of the couch and went to the sideboard, sloshing a measure of whiskey into a tumbler.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Mary asked. "You'll be out in the sun all day."

"Thought we'd determined I ain't so wise," muttered Cullen. He knocked back the amber fluid in a single stiff jerk and bared his teeth as it seared its way down. He exhaled hotly and scrubbed at his beard. "Da—dern it, Mary, I lost that case. I got mad and I didn't think 'bout what I was hearing, and that son of a… he got the better of me."

"You couldn't help it," she protested softly. "You aren't a lawyer: it was such a little thing to notice."

"Don't try and coddle me," he growled. He set down the empty glass and brushed past her and through the door. She followed him to the dining room, catching hold of his arm as he started past the table.

"Cullen," she said. "It's over. There's not a thing you can do to change it. Brooding over what you can't control—"

"Is the reason I'll never make a farmer," he snapped. "But all the same I got a farm out there waiting to be worked. Ain't nobody to do it but me, and I can't stand here talking this through no more."

"You're angry," Mary murmured. It was inadequate, but she could not think of anything else to say.

"Hell, yes, I'm angry!" cried Cullen. His voice echoed off the walls and the chimney of the table lamp rattled. He grimaced apologetically and raked his hand through his hair. "I ain't angry with you," he said softly. "I'm angry with Sutcliffe and I'm angry at my own fool self. But it ain't goin' keep me from working. Not much time left to do what's got to be done."

Mary felt her head bobbing in agreement. She wanted to say something that would force him to forgive himself, but of course there was nothing. The worst of it was that she knew he was not entirely mistaken: his temper always took its worst toll upon his reason, and his reason had failed him in court. He had been used ignobly, but he might have outwitted them had he been in a better frame of mind. He had been bested and he was ashamed, and she could not comfort him.

"Please don't…" He looked sharply at her and she faltered. "Please," she said, less plaintive now and more soothing. "Try not to think about it. Think of something else. Anything else."

He snorted sardonically. "Sure, I can do that;" he said. "Heaven knows I got enough other worries. I can pass the time in reckoning what we'll get for what's left of our crop."

This was almost as bad, but Mary lighted upon an idea. "Think about how you plan to vote," she said. "It's only one week 'til election day."

He was surprised into a lopsided grin. "So it is," he said, almost wonderingly. "Time does get away from you." He moved in as if to kiss her, but only squeezed her hand instead. "Don't you work too hard, you hear me?"

"I'd tell you the same, but you wouldn't listen," said Mary.

His smile broadened and he winked at her, his foul humor dissipated at least a little. "You're right," he said.

She gave him a two-breath head start and then followed him into the empty kitchen. He put on his straw hat – a pitiful, dilapidated ruin now – as he strode onto the stoop. From a peg by the door Mary took her work apron, tying it on as she moved to her bonnet. She put it in place and stepped outside, closing the door behind her, and looped the ribbons into a secure bow. Cullen was already marching off towards the toolshed where he would change into his oilskins before joining Nate and Meg in the tobacco. Mary turned instead to the other end of the dooryard. Bethel already had the boiling pot full of body linen, and was emptying a kettle of steaming water into the washbasin.

Gabe, snugly dressed in the new blue coat that had belonged to his cousin, had been sitting on the hillock with his wooden horses in his lap. Seeing his mother and father he scrambled to his feet. "Pap—" he began, but the call was lost in a series of sharp coughs.

It seemed Cullen heard neither the aborted cry nor the ensuing fit, for he vanished into the toolshed as Mary hurried to her son. His hands were splayed on his belly as he leaned forward, hacking twice more as she knelt beside him. Then he looked up at her, nostrils flaring as he breathed heavily. His eyes were wide with distress and a question he could not utter.

"Just spit it out into the grass, darling," Mary said gently. "It's all right. I know Mama's said that gentlemen don't spit, but it's all right when you aren't well."

Gabe leaned further over his copper-toed shoes and expectorated the mouthful of phlegm that he had been holding with such good intentions. Then he stuck out his tongue. "Pah! _Pah!_" he said, stomping one little foot defiantly. "Dat 'ucky, Mama."

"Yes, lovey, I'm sure it is," Mary said as she brought out her handkerchief. She wiped the corners of Gabe's mouth, patting his back with her other hand. "There. All finished now."

"What color it be, Missus?" Bethel asked. Both arms worked, straining to move the heavy paddle through the laundry. "That there spittle."

"White," said Mary. "Milky. Why?"

"That a good sign," Bethel said sagely. "Ain't green nor bloody, that a good sign."

"His cough seems to be getting worse," Mary said, getting to her feet and taking her son's hand. She led him back to his toys and he sat down contentedly. "He woke in the night on Sunday. Cullen said he couldn't catch a breath."

Bethel frowned, and Mary wondered whether she ought to have mentioned it sooner. "Jus' the oncet?" the old woman asked. At Mary's nod she added; "An' not 'gain las' night?"

"I don't believe so," Mary said. "I'm sure it would have woken me."

"That true," Bethel agreed. "Ain't nuthin' wake a woman faster than her boy got trouble in the night." She looked at the child thoughtfully for a moment, still stirring vigorously. Then she shook her head. "We jus' gots to wait an' see how he fare, Missus. Ain't no cause for worryin' so long as he happy an' he eatin'. His nose be all clear again: maybe that there cough jus' late leaving."

"And if it isn't?" Mary asked worriedly. The fire hissed as Bethel lifted the first knot of garments out and into the washtub with the side of the paddle. She punched them down and fished for the rest.

"Then it goin' get worse," said Bethel. "No sense sendin' fo' the doctor if he jus' goin' tell you wait an' see. We ain't got two dollars to spare fo' no wait-an'-see."

"No," Mary whispered, looking back over her shoulder at her son. Gabe was playing happily, trying to balance one horse upon the back of another. She thought worriedly of the money in the secretary drawer, and the fifteen dollars in the bank. Combined they would not meet even their obligation to Doctor Whitehead. If they sent for him it would only add to that debt. "No, we haven't."

"No, you ain't!" Bethel snapped as Mary bent to pick up the pot of soap. "You's goin' ruin your hands if you does the scrubbin'. I ain't aimin' to have the missus of this house turn all horny-handed like ol' Elijah! You put them pants in the pot an' you give 'em a good soak. I's goin' scrub, same as allus!"

The scolding was oddly comforting, Mary thought as she did as she was told. It was almost as if nothing had changed at all despite the tumult of the last ten days.

_*discidium*_

Bethel came to the tobacco barn at dinnertime to relieve Lottie of the watch. The child was wanted in the sweet potatoes to help Elijah. She was young and nimble, and she could bend to pick up the roots exposed by the old man's careful hoe with greater ease than anyone else on the place. It took Bethel longer than it should have to shoo her away to grab a bite to eat before she went to the work, for Lottie was in an enormously talkative mood. She was bored, sitting all day alone in the barn, and she was eager for company. Well, she could talk all she wanted at Elijah while they dug.

Tending the fires was easy work, but dreary. Bethel almost wished she was the one young enough to be scooping up yams, but she knew it would be a torment to her back and to her stiff hip. She always felt the ache in her bones this time of year when the weather was changing. Today was a mild day, but the misery in her joints told her that they could expect rain tomorrow, all right. She wondered whether there was any chance of finishing the tobacco today. She hadn't asked after it in over a week, not since before Meg's capture and Mister Cullen's arrest. There was no use asking: she knew the news wouldn't be cheerful. She could see in her master's eyes how little hope was left in those fields. He didn't seem to see the crates piled high in the barn, or the laden poles strung above her head right now. All he saw was the sorry remnant of the seconds still on the plants, and the perfect crop that had been lost to the hail. That was, of course, when he wasn't looking at his own mistakes and despising them.

And they were mistakes, certainly. A series of unfortunate miscalculations that had had a terrible outcome. It had been a mistake to let Meg off his land; a mistake not to send her with that piece of paper; a mistake to let the sheriff trick him into an admission; some sort of awful mistake that he had made in court. As a result Mister Cullen was another thirty-five dollars in debt, Meg was scarred in body and spooked in spirit, and the quiet – if desperate – life of the little plantation had been shattered. Bethel shivered when she thought of the things they had said to each other, the master and the mistress. She had never heard them fight like that: hammer and tongs, tearing into one another as if their voices were claws that could gouge the very soul. They had made their peace with one another, but she wondered how deep the wounds of that night had sunk. Were they like the wheals on Meg's back that were even now starting to fade about the edges and would in the end leave only a few knotty scars? Or were they like the wounds on Meg's heart, which Bethel did not really believe would ever heal?

And now there was little Mister Gabe to worry about. Bethel had been so certain that he was recovering, but now she was no longer convinced. The cough was worse, all right, and if it had woken him once in the night it might do again. She knew there was nothing to do but wait, and yet she found the waiting intolerable. In better times she would have counselled Missus Mary to send for the doctor, just so that the responsibility for the decision to wait would not rest on her shoulders. But two dollars was a high ransom to pay for a salved conscience. This was one worry she would just have to bear.

When night fell Bethel was waiting. She had straightened her back out of its tired stoop and smoothed her skirts neatly. The old crate that served as a chair was hard and too low for comfort. How the others bore it night after night she did not know. When the kiln door opened and a wall of cool, fresh air swept in, Bethel was only too glad to haul her weary old bones up off of the box.

"Missus Mary fix you up sumthin' nice fo' dinner?" she asked as Mister Cullen came in. He had a laden plate in one hand and a small hunk of bread in the other. Tucked under his arm was one of the earthenware jugs they used for coffee, stoppered with a wedge of cork. A tin cup was looped over his thumb.

"Rabbit pot pie and grits," he said. "She done something with beets 'n beans, too: looks a treat. The yams she roasted." He inhaled deeply of the golden scent of the roots, and Bethel almost smiled. Poor child had been missing them just as much as any of the black folks. "Made a walnut pie, too, only without any crust. Is the flour getting low?"

It was, lower than Bethel liked with eight to feed and a month to go before any money would come in, but there was no use in adding to his burdens. "Ain't yet," she said stoutly. "An' it ain't goin' to so long as we be careful with it. You need crust with your pie that bad?"

He chuckled a little, very quietly, and set his plate down on the crate. "No, I reckon I don't," he conceded. He relieved himself of the bottle and the tin cup, and looked down at the bread in his hand. "You figure we got enough to last, then?"

"I do," Bethel declared. "Don' you fret 'bout that. Keepin' folks fed is my business, not any of your'n."

"Ain't it?" he asked. He ducked as he moved around the crate, straightening again when he was no longer under the leaves. He pressed his back to the wall of the barn and slid down onto the ground, extending one booted foot towards the middle fire. He made no sound as he descended, but from the sudden release of tension from his jaw Bethel knew it was a tremendous relief to sit at last.

"You know jus' what I mean," she said. "Gettin' them provisions laid down cellar, that you' business. What we does with 'em after is mine. Mine an' Missus Mary's."

He tugged a knife and fork out of the pocket of his trousers and tugged his plate closer to him. He sopped a corner of the bread in the dark juices of the pot pie and bit into it. His eyes fluttered closed for a moment and he nodded. "S'pose it is," he said quietly. He studied his plate and dug in with his fork. When he had chewed his first mouthful he looked up at her again. "How soon you reckon we can kill a hog?" he asked.

Bethel shook her head. "December be butcherin' time," she said. "Ain't no use rushin' Ol' Man Nature. Kill 'em too soon, get a warm night an' you goin' ruin fifty dollars' worth of meat."

Mister Cullen took the fork from his mouth, his lips tightening as if the helping he had just taken had suddenly turned to charcoal. He swallowed with an effort. "Guess I just hoped we might take one early," he said quietly.

Bethel nudged the door closed and moved to stand at the other side of the crate. Caving to her longing to comfort him, she reached and put her hand on his shoulder. "Aw, honey, if you's that hungry for a bit of pork I still got a li'l bacon kep' back fo' flavorin'. I'll fry you up a slice fo' your breakfas' tomorrow."

"It ain't that," he groused, shrugging her off and spearing a cube of dark beet. He looked at it as if he could make it burst into flames and then shoved it wrathfully into his mouth. "I don't want my boy growing up on jackrabbit."

Miss Caroline would have been heartbroken to see her own boy fed on jackrabbit after working all day, settling down to eat it on a dirt floor before sitting up half the night curing tobacco, but Bethel did not say this. "Two-three weeks eatin' it don' mean he goin' grow up on it," she said. "We's jus' had a hard year, an' it be pretty near over. Soon there goin' be plenty meat fo' ev'ybody. Mebbe you even take a day to go out huntin' an' bring back some venison."

"Mighta done," Mister Cullen mumbled around a mouthful of vegetables; "if I hadn't lost this last week. Can't spare me now, not for a damned minute."

"Ain't no cause fo' cussin'," Bethel scolded, more out of habit than consternation. She wouldn't deny him a strong word or two if it made him feel better, but she though perhaps being admonished for it was just as big a comfort.

It seemed she was right. He smiled tiredly. "Best get on up to the house and eat," he said. "How is it you're always the last one to get your meals?"

Bethel shrugged her lean shoulders, her apron-strings tugging a little at the motion. "How is it summer don' come before spring?" she asked. "You take care an' eat ev'ry mouthful of that, you hear? You's lookin' thin."

He shook his head ruefully, knowing there was no use in protesting, and turned his attention back to his plate. Bethel opened the door again, drinking deeply of the cool night air. White folks said the night air was poison, but it sure did smell sweet after long hours in the stuffiness of the kiln.

"Bethel?"

His voice called her back, low and unsteady. She turned loving eyes upon him, seeing in the weary and sweat-drenched man the little child who used to creep down to her room while his father and grandfather slept. "Yassir, Mist' Cullen?" she said.

"I've made a mess of everything," he murmured. He was looking up at her now, the firelight staining his irises almost golden. "Meg, the hearing, the tobacco, everything."

She would have gone to him, but the box stood between them and to round it was to impose too far upon familiarity and so forget her station in life. All she could do was come back to the edge of that wooden border, but there she crouched so that their faces were level. "Ain't no mess beyond fixin'," she said. "Meg gettin' stronger each 'n ev'y day. The tobacco still goin' be better 'n what you got las' year. You know that."

"Sure," he said. "But I didn't have more'n forty-five dollars in debt last year. Got a hundred and thirty already, and I ain't shipped it yet. Everything we made do without last year is wearing out now. Tools, plowshares, clothes. Boots."

His eyes traveled down the length of his leg to the cracked, mud-caked leather drying in the warmth of the embers. His work-boots were about worn out: Bethel knew that. She was the one who kept them clean and greased. The stitching was sound, but the leather had stretched and in places torn, and the soles were worn thin. Nate's and Elijah's were no better, and she and Meg were down to the hide in their shoes. Missus Mary had two pair for everyday, so hers were in a little better shape, but Lottie would likely outgrow hers before the end of the winter. At least Mister Gabe had good, stout little boots thanks to his aunt's good sense in saving what her boy had outgrown.

"Nate can hone a plowshare," Bethel said. "Missus Mary gots cloth to get new pants made, an' a new dress or two. Don' take nuthin' to dress a li'l boy, an' Lottie gots a new frock. Mos' ev'ything else can do another year if it got to, 'ceptin' them boots." She said nothing about Meg's ruined dress. He did not need that bitter reminder of the horror that was the cause of his melancholy.

"I can wear my riding boots when these give out," said Mister Cullen wearily; "but Nate's just about through the soles of his. Ain't had a good look at Elijah's." He sighed, twisting the fork between his fingers. "I don't know what we're going to do, Bethel. I just don't know. Up until this last I thought we'd maybe make it. Now…" He gestured vaguely. "I just don't know."

"The Lord provides for his children, honey," Bethel soothed. "Ain't no good worryin' 'fore you gots to. You see how much tobacco you got, an' you see what price it bring. _Then_ you see if you gots to worry some."

"Oh, I gots to worry all right. I been figuring," he said darkly, staring at the scarcely-touched plate.

Still squatting though her hams ached, Bethel uncorked the jug and poured a steaming cupful of coffee. He wasn't shaking, but his shirt was drenched with sweat and heavy fall dew, and the knees of his pants were wet where his sodden drawers had soaked through. He had to be cold. She wished she could bundle him up in the old horse blanket that lay on the ground, but that coddling would be too much for his pride just now. Instead she pushed the tin cup against the back of his hand and watched with some satisfaction as his fingers curled around it.

"That 'nother thing, Mist' Cullen," she said. "You does altogether too much figurin'. Ain't good for a body to think so much. It goin' wear you out."

He looked up at her and his lips curled into a toothy grin over the dented rim of the mug. His eyes glinted, but not with amusement. "Don't think I got much farther to wear," he said. Then he took a long swallow of the coffee and seemed to shake himself. When his eyes met hers again they were quiet and rimmed with fatigue. "Don't mind me, Bethel. I'm just… it's been a long day. I work faster when I work mad, but it sure does tucker me out."

"Sure it do, chile," Bethel said gently. She wanted to gather him into her arms as she had when he was small, but of course she could not do it. She watched as he took a forkful of hominy and rabbit gravy. From the smell of the meal Missus Mary had done a proper job. Mister Cullen chewed methodically, and then sighed.

"You go on," he said. "Your supper's waiting."

Bethel longed to protest that she did not intend to go anywhere while he was so troubled in his mind, but she knew he would not stand it. His instinct in times of trouble was to go off on his own, retreat into himself and mull over the matter in private turmoil. He had nowhere he could run, but at least she could leave him this questionable sanctuary. "Yassir, Mist' Cullen," she said. "You take care."

He grunted noncommittally and swallowed again. His appetite had awakened: he was intent upon his meal. But as she drew near the door he spoke once more. "Could you hand me that blanket?" he asked. "Please?"

She picked it up, shaking loose dirt and scraps of tobacco leaf. At last she could round him, stepping carefully over his outstretched leg. His waist was twisted so that he could eat off his makeshift table while keeping his left thigh pressed against it, and she had no trouble in draping the scratchy wool around his shoulders. His free hand clutched it close, and she tucked one corner over his arm and another around his hip.

"There," she whispered, letting her lips brush the bushy hair that stood out from the crown of his head, just as she had done in the old days when he was no bigger than Gabe. Under the tang of sour sweat it was still there: the scent of her own little boy. "G'night, honey. Don' you sit up none aft' your turn over. You needs you' sleep."

"Yes ma'am," he said obediently, not even a hint of insolence in his voice. Somehow this was the saddest of all.

Outside the moon was high and the sky a bare field of stars. Bethel's breath came in a cloud before her as she walked through the long grass towards the house. The kitchen lamp was lit, and she stepped into her familiar realm to find everything in perfect order. The dishes were washed, the floor swept, the table scrubbed bone-white. Even the water in the ewer on the washstand had been changed. Bethel washed her hands and face, scrubbing away the thin film of soot from the tobacco fires. On the warming shelf at the back of the stove sat a plate laid with hominy and vegetables. The remains of the pot pie still simmered in its pan. Bethel scooped out a generous helping and set it down on the table, where a glass of milk and a piece of crustless walnut pie were waiting for her. Missus Mary had even thought to lay out utensils and a napkin.

Bethel glanced towards the door that led to the dining room. It stood ajar, which was not unusual, but the room beyond was lighted. On the nights when Mister Cullen had the first watch in the kiln and so did not take his supper in the house, the mistress usually went up to bed when she had finished with supper. It was unusual for her to sit in the dining room anyhow.

Bethel went to the door, pulling it slowly open. Missus Mary was not sitting at all. She had pulled the chairs away from the table, and they stood in a line against the wall by the windows. She was bent over an unevenly-cut piece of stout white calico with a stub of charcoal between her third and fourth finger. Bethel recognized it as one of the pressed pieces from Mister Cullen's tin of drafting tools left over from his days at the University in Tuscaloosa. With her left hand and the thumb and first two fingers of her right, the young lady was adjusting two pieces of faded print fabric on top of the calico. Only when she reached down to draw up a thin strip between them did Bethel recognize the back panel of Meg's ruined bodice. The other pieces – fronts, side backs and sleeves – lay spread upon the sideboard, trimmed at the stitching lines so that they lay flat.

Missus Mary did not notice her: she was intent upon her work. The best lamp stood on one corner of the table, and the second-best beside it, offering as much light as possible without wasting kerosene. She frowned, gnawing briefly on her lower lip, and shifted the left fragment. Then, very carefully, she began to mark the edges upon the cloth beneath.

"Missus?" Bethel said softly.

She scarcely glanced up. "Oh, Bethel, good!" she said. "What do you think? I've pieced it as best I can, though it's impossible to tell quite how much frayed away. I'll leave a little extra, and I can always take it in if it doesn't fit."

Bethel stepped nearer, studying the work. It looked like a very good approximation to her. Considering what there was left to work with, Missus Mary was doing very well. But her heart was uneasy as she asked; "What you goin' use for cloth? We don' got no dress lengths fo' workin' clothes. Nuthin' but them fine fabrics you' mama done sent you."

"I know," said Mary. "I thought I would use that." She twitched her thumb towards the chairs, and Bethel noticed now the dark green sprigged cloth folded in a neat heap upon the seat of the nearest one. She frowned.

"But them's the new curtains from the front bedroom," she protested.

"Yes, but the muslin liners will do just fine," said Mary. "We aren't likely to have guests again for quite some time, and even if we do there's no one to look in at the windows. I know the cloth isn't a match to the skirt, but at least it isn't an unpleasant combination. It won't do for best wear, but Meg cannot be expected to get by with one frock. She's the only one who won't have clean clothes to wear tomorrow."

This was true: because Meg had to wear something to work in the fields, they had been unable to launder her dress. A frock made of two different cloths was not ideal – was in fact as embarrassingly frank an admission of poverty as serving jackrabbit at the white family's table – but at least it would allow Meg the bare necessities of comfort. Bethel had been unsettled by Mister Cullen's implication that he did not intend to buy himself a new pair of work-boots. There was no chance, then, of a new dress for Meg.

"You ain't meanin' to sew it up tonight?" Bethel asked.

"I thought tomorrow," said Missus Mary. "The sewing will go quickly enough, and it's simple to do even with interruptions, but I thought I had best take care of this part while I don't have a small boy to keep entertained."

"He sleepin', then?" asked Bethel, glancing at the ceiling in the direction of the nursery. "Ain' had too much trouble with that cough?"

"I gave him some of your blackberry root mixture right before bed." Missus Mary carefully swept the charcoal along the curve at the top of the armscye. "He seems to take it easier than the soothing syrup from the druggist."

Bethel nodded. "Ain' so bitter," she said. Her mistress's sewing box was sitting on the sideboard among the trimmed pieces of the bodice, and she went to it. "I kin cut 'way that lace, an' you can put it aside fo' when you gets a chance to make youself sumthin' pretty," she offered.

"Have you eaten yet?" asked Mary.

Bethel's cheeks burned a little. "No'm," she admitted. She had almost forgotten about supper, but suddenly her stomach was growling insistently.

The younger woman looked up, blue eyes tender. "Go and eat," she said. "And don't hurry yourself. You've put in just as long a day as anyone else."

"No'm, not quite _anyone_ else," murmured Bethel as she made her retreat.

_*discidium*_

When Nate came to relieve him Cullen gathered his dishes, long since empty and scraped clean, and trudged wearily back to the house. It had been another long day, though a day at least that had not ended with maddening revelations of his own stupidity. He had thought it was unbearable to be unable to comprehend how he had been bested. As it turned out it was far worse to know just what had gone wrong, and that logic and a clear head might have allowed him to escape. He had been caught unawares, bewildered by the sudden change in his prospects and addled with want of food and sleep, but was that really any excuse? And even with those disadvantages, might he not have fared better if only he had troubled to control his temper? His hot Scotch blood had got him into trouble before this, but somehow none of those failures smarted as this one did.

He knew why. In the past no one had suffered for his fits of choler but himself. True, his father had flushed a little with shame, or Bethel lost a night's sleep in worry, or one of his college companions had come away with a few bruises or a blackened eye. But this time, everyone had suffered. Mary, struggling to manage the crisis in his absence. Gabe, ill and pining for his father. Bethel, anxious for him and still obliged to tend to Meg. Meg herself, no doubt unjustly guilty with the knowledge that the sheriff might have taken her instead. Nate and Elijah, doing their best to work for four. And Lottie… he didn't know quite how it had hurt Lottie, but surely it had. And every one of them would suffer some loss of luxury or necessity to pay his fine.

Yet as dreadful as all that was, he was dogged by the grim certainty that the troubles of the year were not yet at an end. There was so much that might still go awry, and all that he could do was shuffle his frantically bobbing feet and brace himself for the next blow.

Cullen reached the back door and tugged it open as quietly as he could. He eased himself down on the bench in the dark and found the bootjack with one questing foot. His stockings were damp and sticky with tobacco juice, and he nudged them off with his toes. Then barefoot he found his way across the kitchen. The dining room was ghostly in the moonlight, and there were pieces of cloth piled on the table. Scarcely glancing at them he shuffled into the front hallway. He was at the foot of the stairs when he realized that above in the nursery his son was coughing.

He moved faster than his weary legs should have been able to carry him. The noise was harsh and relentless, a series of rattles broken only by a high, wheezing _whoop_. It was not a healthful sound; not an ordinary cough. The gasps Gabe had given the other night were nothing compared to this. He sounded as if he were choking upon his own lungs.

Cullen's mind scarcely registered the incongruity of the quadrangle of candlelight pouring from open nursery door. He rushed in and caught himself against the edge of the bedstead, clutching the footboard as he tried to take in the scene before him. The bedclothes had been flung back, and Gabe was sitting bolt upright as he had on Sunday night. His hands dug into the mattress and his body rocked with each sundering cough. Mary was sitting behind him, left foot on the floor and right leg tucked up to brace his back. The position dragged her nightshirt high upon her leg, baring it almost to the knee, but she was oblivious to that. She was leaning forward, curled around Gabe's right shoulder to watch his face. One hand was splayed upon the wall for balance, while the other patted fervently between the child's shoulder blades. Her eyes were wild and her face white.

"Breathe, dearest, _please_ breathe!" she cried as Gabe made another sharp, almost inhuman whooping sound that was cut short at its shrillest point by yet another cough. "Gabe! Gabe, you've got to breathe!"

"Son?" Cullen twisted his leg around the bedpost and sat heavily on the tick. The bed rocked and Gabe's body bounced, but he was coughing too hard even to notice. Cullen forced himself to take a breath, knowing he would be content never to do so again if only he could give his untainted lungs to his child. But panic would not help anyone. Gabe's face was a taut, pale mask dragging down toward the ring of his lips, but his eyes were glazed with terror. He needed his parents to be calm for him. "Son, it's all right. Remember? You got to cough. Just bring it out. Cough it all out."

He tried, his ribs heaving beneath the muslin of his nightshirt and his thin little shoulders bolting. The cough was a long, deep, ratcheting one, and it ended in a heartbeat of perfect silence. Then Gabe tried again to breathe, and again all he managed was whistling _whoop_ that could not even be called a gasp.

There was the pounding of feet on the stairs, and Cullen was dimly aware of Bethel's nightgown-clad form towering over him, of her capable dark hands moving in. One supported Gabe's head and the other rested consolingly on his elbow. The old woman murmured something low and soothing, but Cullen could not hear it. His ears were filled with the barking of the next series of coughs, and as he watched something still more dreadful happened.

Gabe's lips, until a moment ago a brilliant pink with the strain wracking his young frame, drained first to a white that rivaled Mary's and then to a ghastly, unearthly, inhuman shade of blue.

"Dear God!" Cullen choked, feeling the color abandon his own face.

"What? What is it?" cried Mary. She glanced hastily at Cullen and then looked at her child. Her wild eyes grew manic as she saw it, too. "Bethel, what's wrong? He can't breathe! Why won't he breathe?"

Gabe wheezed again, this time not even taking in enough air for the sharp crescendo. The next cough sent him doubling over his lap despite the gentle hands bearing him up. For a single, awful moment Cullen thought he had lost consciousness, or even – but that was unthinkable. Then Gabe's whole body shuddered and he took in a gasp of air so deep and sudden that it sounded as if it could have filled the chests of four little boys, and it came out in a keening terrified wail.

Mary looked ready to swoon away with relief at the sound, but she didn't. She wrapped her arms around her son's waist and hauled him into her lap, rocking him to and fro. Her right hand slipped up to cup his forehead so that his head was drawn back against her breast. "There, darling. There, there," she said, as breathless as though she had been the one lost in the fit of horrific coughing.

"Hush, chile, that my li'l lamb," murmured Bethel.

Cullen could say nothing. All he could manage was to sit there, limp with gratitude, and watch as his boy's face flushed red again and the hideous azure left his lips. Gabe sobbed twice, thinly, but he was exhausted. He twisted in towards his mother, nuzzling against her.

"What is it? What happened?" Mary gasped. She was looking at Bethel, and Cullen found his own eyes shifting in the same direction. Bethel's sensible, beloved old face was carved in crevices of care.

"I ain' see'd it in fifty years, Missus," she said. "Not since I was a girl out in Charleston an' we all come down with it." She was looking at Gabe as though measuring him for a winding sheet. "That chile, he have the kink-cough."

"The what?" squealed Mary, scarcely able to form the words. Gabe's face was florid, but hers was still ashen.

"'Hoopin' cough, some folks call it," said Bethel. Her hand crept up to her throat and she closed her eyes. They rolled up into her head so the whites showed beneath trembling lashes and she moaned; "Lor' have mercy, Lor' have mercy!"

"Whooping cough?" Mary's lips moved, but her throat scarcely formed the words. "No. Oh, _no_!"

Then Gabe stiffened in his mother's arms, gave a little hiccough and began to hack again, harder this time. It scarcely seemed possible for such a cacophony to tear from such a small body, but it did. This time the _whoop _made Cullen's whole body jerk. He reached instinctively for his boy, a sharp motion that aborted fruitlessly not two inches from his shoulders. Mary forsook her own hold as though her arms might choke the last vestiges of air from him. Lost in blinding fear, Cullen very nearly struck out with his fist when someone seized his arm just above the elbow.

"Mist' Cullen," Bethel said. Her voice was hard now, stern and commanding. She had control. She knew what must be done. He knew he would obey her. "Mist' Cullen, you gots to ride an' fetch the doct'r right this minute!"


	50. A Midnight Ride

**Chapter Fifty: A Midnight Ride**

His riding boots were standing outside the bedroom door where Mary had left them the previous evening, and Cullen thrust his feet into them with such force that it was a wonder he did not put his heels right through the soles. The sound of Gabe's coughing and the awful, fruitless struggle to breathe chased him down the stairs like a demon and through the front door. Only dim instinct closed his hand upon the knob to drag it closed again behind him. He tore around the gatepost and ran to the barn, flinging his whole weight into hauling open the right-hand door. He snatched up the box of matches and lit the lamp, his hands deft and remarkably steady despite the pounding of his heart. The animals were sleeping, and when he flung open the gate to Bonnie's stall she snorted and shook her head, disgruntled at the sudden awakening. Cullen slipped the bridle over her nose and settled the bit. She licked at it, her sharp dark eye rolling to look at his face. She sensed his agitation and stamped restlessly at the straw beneath her hooves, nickering a question.

The sound woke Pike, who shuffled in his stall and then bowed his head to drink. Cullen lifted his saddle off of its rack and settled it across Bonnie's strong, sleek back. At once she tossed her head, her mane slapping at his face as it flew, and let out a long whinnying noise of triumph. Ordinarily Cullen would have said something encouraging in response to this show of joy, but he was too distraught now. Never in his life had he cinched the straps and fastened the buckles with such speed, not even on the morning Mary had gone into labor. Then he had known that despite his own consternation the situation was natural, and that Bethel had the matter well in hand. But tonight his son was suffering, unable even to draw breath, and Bethel had been just as terrified as anyone else at the sight.

He forced himself to check the leathers, for it would do no one any good if the saddle slipped, harming the mare or sending him rolling into a ditch. By now the mules were awake, too, bawling and braying indignantly. Cullen set his teeth against the hateful sounds, half-wishing he could march down to the far and of the barn and swat their noses to make them shut up. Instead he led Bonnie out and yanked the stable door closed with such force that it shuddered. He brought the reins around to the back of her neck and thrust his boot into the stirrup, the stacked heel catching as it was meant to. He swung into the saddle, casting one last, anxious look at the glow of candlelight behind the nursery curtains. He almost believed that he could hear the rattling coughs and the wretched, choking whoops as his son strove fruitlessly to draw breath, but of course that was ridiculous. Gathering the reins he tapped his heel against Bonnie's flank.

"Ya!" he cried, and she broke at once into a strong canter.

Responding to the cues of his body, the Morgan followed the drive into the shady lane. Cullen held her steady as she took it, for the way was dark and the ground rutted, but as they turned out onto the main road he let loose upon the reins and urged her on. With a cry of pure delight Bonnie sprang into a gallop, gaining speed so swiftly that Cullen's stomach seemed to press against his spine. Her mane flew and his hair whipped back, and nimble hooves pounded the packed dirt. The moon, round and yellow and just past full, lit their way as they thundered past Boyd Ainsley's empty cotton fields and the path that led to his home. The stand of old, wild wood flew by upon the left, and then the rolling acres of the Graham plantation appeared.

Cullen saw none of this. He kept his eyes upon the stretch of road ahead, the wind of Bonnie's swift passage stinging his cheeks and plastering his damp work shirt to his chest and arms. His body rose and fell with hers in the organic rhythm of one bred to the saddle from childhood. His right hand gripped the reins, keeping them loose enough that his steed could exert all the speed her wild heart wished but snug enough that he could guide her as the need arose. His left, bobbing low beside his hip, held the hanging tails so that they did not slap her side or offer any distraction in her flight. His heart was hammering in his chest and his pulse throbbed in his throat and temples. He could not think. He could scarcely breathe. All that he could do was make haste.

The distance that took an hour to cover in the buggy flew past in less than a quarter of that time under Bonnie's full gallop. Cullen reined her in, but only a little, as they came to the edge of the town. In the deep of the night Meridian was all but silent, the houses dark and the businesses shut up. Somewhere a tomcat squalled, and here and there a loose gate rattled as horse and rider thundered past, but there was no sign of human activity in the slumbering community. Cullen steered Bonnie down the little cross-street and down the hill to the neat stucco house standing sedate in the moonlight. Not troubling with the gate, he tightened the grip of his knees against Bonnie's ribs and tugged back. In a smooth, long motion she jumped the low hedge, hooves digging into the grass of the front lawn.

Almost without prompting she slowed to a trot as Cullen guided her around to the back of the house. There was a hitching rail beside the stable, and a trough filled with water. He dismounted in haste, tying off the reins more out of habit than design. Bonnie, flanks heaving with the invigorating ride, bowed her head to drink. Even as she did so, Cullen was bolting up the back steps onto the encircling veranda. He dashed around past the porch-swing towards the front of the house, and was hammering upon the door even before his feet stopped moving.

No immediate answer came, of course, for even in this house accustomed to midnight awakenings it was the hour of repose. But as Cullen continued to pound a flicker of candlelight showed beyond the glass set in the door and then drew nearer. The door swung in and Ellie, candlestick in one hand and shawl around her shoulders, leaned to see who had roused her from her bed.

"Why, Mist' Bohannon!" she cried, opening the door still wider and taking his forearm to draw him into the entryway. "You look like you's been chased by the Devil hisself."

"I need the doctor, Ellie," Cullen said, his words tripping out over a tongue incapable of adequately expressing the urgency of the situation. "He got to come straight away. My boy… he's taken a turn. Bethel thinks it's whooping cough. He can't hardly breathe."

Ellie clicked her tongue and guided him to the chair that stood by the door for moments such as these. In his agitation Cullen's instinct was to fight her, but now that he had ceased moving the strength seemed to ebb from his limbs. He sat down meekly, his ribs heaving. Every breath stabbed him with guilt at its instinctual ease. Was Gabe even now unable to draw in even the smallest measure of air? Was he blue with coughing in Mary's arms? Had he passed out from the strain? Was he…

No. His mind shrank from that possibility. It could not be so. It must not be so. Upstairs he heard heavy feet thundering back and forth. Ellie was still beside him, but his frantic knocking had obviously awakened Doctor Whitehead. Such a noise at this hour could only mean one thing, and the man was already dressing.

"Jus' you sit," Ellie was saying, her firm hand upon Cullen's shoulder. "I's goin' fetch you some water, an' you jus' catch your breath. The doctor be down direc'ly."

"No," Cullen gasped, shaking his head. Perspiration was trickling into his eyes, smarting fiercely, and now that he was still his damp clothes were chilling him. "Go up and tell him, Ellie. Tell him he got to hurry. Please."

"Mist' Bohannon, he know he got to hurry," Ellie reassured him. "Ain' nobody come 'round here this time of night unless there cause to hurry."

She disappeared into the parlor and came back with a tumbler full of water. Cullen took it, but his hands were shaking now and more fluid dribbled into his beard and down his front than reached his mouth. When he heard the footfalls draw near the head of the stairs, he hurriedly thrust the glass onto the little table beside him and got to his feet.

"Ellie?" Doc Whitehead's steady, quiet voice came down the stairs just ahead of him. "Who is it? What's happened?"

Cullen bolted for the foot of the stairs, gripping the newel post. "It's me, Doc. My boy—"

"Oh, dear, taken a turn, has he?" Doc asked. His tone was brisk but calm.

"Whooping cough," Cullen choked out.

Doc stopped on the last stair, eyes widening. For an awful moment his countenance was one of startled dismay. Then his eyelids grew narrow and he nodded once, curt and businesslike. "Ellie, my coat," he said as he stepped down. "Cullen, just you run next door and tell them to get Silas over here to saddle up Castor—"

The thought of waiting for a drowsy Negro boy to bestir himself, dress, and then make his way over to the doc's stable was too frustrating. "Hell, no, I'll saddle him!" Cullen cried. "Ain't no time to waste, Doc. His lips went blue."

Ellie was holding the physician's greatcoat so that he could slip his arms into the sleeves with ease. He did so, and took his hat from its peg. "Go on, then," he said. "My tack's on the left. I'll be out just as soon as I put a few more things in my bag."

It took Doctor Whitehead less than ten minutes to fetch what he needed, but by the time he came out Cullen had the gelding ready and both horses waiting at the gate. It had taken him a little longer to saddle Castor than it had Bonnie, for he was unfamiliar with the doctor's tack, and still he had to stand restlessly waiting. The older man came out at last, hurrying down the steps. He hooked his dark leather satchel to the saddle and took the reins from Cullen. Together they mounted and moved wordlessly out into the street as Ellie came down, barefoot and clad in her nightgown, to close the gate.

"Take care you don' ride too fast," she said. "Ain' goin' help that chile if one of them horses turns a foot or throws a shoe! Ridin' out on All Hallows Night; ain't right."

"Children don't chose when they take ill, Ellie," Doc said soothingly. "You get on back to bed, now. I may be gone some time."

Bonnie was restive and it took all of Cullen's self-control not to simply let her tear off towards home again. He led her into a canter out of consideration to Ellie, and Doc followed. But the moment they were out of sight of the house Cullen urged Bonnie on. He let her gallop, but not at speed: Castor was no match for her. Side by side the two riders thundered through the streets of Meridian and up to the road that led back to the Bohannon plantation.

_*discidium*_

Bethel put the kettle on the stove and stirred up the fire, then stood back and wrapped her shawl more snugly about her shoulders. Mary, her dressing gown flung haphazardly over her nightgown, was sitting in the old woman's chair with her son in her lap. Gabe was curled against her, feet tucked up against his bottom, his strength utterly spent. The second fit of coughing had been the worst, no doubt exacerbated by distress at his father's sudden departure. Neither woman had even heard horse and rider go, so frantically had they been tending to the child. There was nothing to be done in the throes of such paroxysms: all they could do was sit Gabe up and support him so he did not tumble over, and to try to murmur words of comfort that he might well be too far-gone to hear.

There had been a third fit close upon the heels of the second but not so violent. Then Gabe had subsisted for a while in Mary's arms, gasping shallowly while hot tears streamed down his plump little cheeks. Hoarsely he had repeated over and over; "I couldn' bree'd, Mama. I couldn' bree'd." At last he had fallen quiet and Mary had tried to lay him down upon his pillow again.

That had been a mistake. No sooner was he on his back than the coughing started up again, punctuated by the horrible whooping until his lips took on a bluish cast and his whole body jerked with each wretched attempt to draw breath. After it passed again he had started to tremble, whereupon Bethel had suggested they take him down to the warmth of the kitchen to wait for the doctor. She had fetched Mary's wrap, while Mary bundled Gabe in the quilt from his bed, and they had come downstairs.

Cullen had not been gone long; intellectually Mary knew that. Surely it had not even been an hour yet since he had fled from the house to fetch the doctor. It was too soon to expect him home. But as she held her exhausted child and felt his fever burning under her palm a terrible thought struck her. Suppose Cullen rode into Meridian, only to find that Doctor Whitehead was already abroad? She knew her husband would not simply wait for him to return, but Cullen might have to ride another ten miles or more to find him if he were out at one of the plantations south of the town, or the small farms on the other side of Sowashee Creek. The thought of such a delay turned her cold with anxiety.

"I's goin' fix you up some of that New York tea, Missus," Bethel said quietly, coming out of the pantry with the precious little packet in her hand. She paused, shrugging the shawl higher on her shoulder and studying Gabe's curled form. His eyelids were fluttering, neither open nor quite closed. "How that fever?"

"Just the same, I think," Mary murmured. Gabe stirred at the sound of her voice, but did not speak. "How serious is it, Bethel? Is he… might he…"

"Some does, Missus Mary. Some does," said Bethel.

"But you said you had it, and you came through," Mary said worriedly, desperate for some reassurance, no matter how small."

"Yas'm, I did," said Bethel. "But I were eight-nine year old. Li'l ones, they gets it worse, jus' like mos' things. Ain't to say we gots no hope," she added hastily at her mistress's stricken expression. "Jus' to say it ain't no 'stravagance sendin' fo' the doctor."

"Extravagance?" gasped Mary. "No, of course it's not." Then the implication of these words struck her and she felt a thrill of despair. "I don't know how we'll pay him, but surely he'll extend us some grace."

Bethel went soundlessly to the dish dresser and poured a cup of cool water. She came back to Mary and squatted beside the chair so that she could look Gabe in the eye. "You wants a li'l water, honey?" she cooed. "Is you thirsty?"

"Dirsty," Gabe agreed, his eyes opening. He pushed against Mary's breastbone with one hand, sitting up on her lap, and worked the other free of the blanket so that both could reach for the tin mug. Bethel let him take it, but her fingers hovered nearby, ready to catch it if his grip slipped. Gabe slurped greedily, smacking his lips as he swallowed. He drained the whole cup and nodded stoutly. "Good," he pronounced. His poor little voice was hoarse from coughing. "T'ank you, Bet'l." He twisted to look at his mother. "Where Pappy gone?"

As Mary's lips parted to answer, Gabe's flew wide. His tongue thrust against his teeth and he gave a shallow little cough. For a moment there was silence, the two women watching in breathless, desperate hope that it might end there, but then the onslaught began. Gabe's chest heaved and jerked as he coughed, and his ribs went taut as he strained to breathe and brought in nothing more than the high-pitched wheeze. Mary's arm, a moment ago resting against the side of the chair, curled swiftly around her son's back. Her fingers took hold of his thigh just below the hip to keep him from tumbling off of her lap. Again Gabe coughed, thrice in rapid succession, and again he whooped. The next series of sharp barks terminated in a strangled sound, and his little belly rippled. His hand moved to clutch at it while his other flailed in an anxious little gesture. Then, after two more sharp coughs he leaned forward and began to retch.

Bethel snatched up a bowl, but not quickly enough. The first gout of vomit – chiefly water intermingled with the pureed remains of the child's supper – splashed on the quilt and splattered Mary's sleeve. The hand that was not holding Gabe in place moved to his brow, bracing him as he gagged again, this time into the dish. Another cough tore through him, swiftly followed by more bile and fluid. He was shaking now with sobs he could not articulate for want of air, and the next cough brought up thick white mucus with the last of the contents of his stomach. He wheezed and began to choke.

Swiftly, still holding the basin with one hand, Bethel reached around and thumped him between the shoulder blades with a firm fist. There was a hollow popping noise as the air was driven from his lungs and the aspirated vomit was sent bursting out of his throat into the bowl. Then Gabe took in a deep, harsh, sundering gasp of air and began to weep loudly. Mary had to restrain the urge to smother him in a tight embrace, and instead let her palm slip down to caress his cheek.

"Good boy, brave boy," she chanted, jiggling one leg gently beneath him. Her frightened eyes followed Bethel as she laid aside the soiled dish and wetted the corner of a rag, but she did not let her terror show in her voice. "That's my little man. It's all right, dearest. It's all right."

"I m-m-maked a mess!" Gabe sobbed, pointing at the sour-smelling stain upon the blanket. Then his hand plucked at Mary's sleeve where the fluid made the cherry silk a deep carmine. "I maked a mess on _you_!"

It was another of those poignant little moments that told Mary her son was growing up. He was not merely miserable, sick and distressed: he was ashamed. "Never mind, lovey. It washes out," she murmured.

Bethel bent to wipe the froth of foul spittle from Gabe's mouth and chin. Mary's hand slid down to his shoulder to allow the older woman more room to work. "That ain' nuthin' t'all, Mist' Gabe," she said. "Why, when you' pappy was a li'l boy, he sneaked him some green peaches one aft'noon, an' he sicked 'em up all over the parlor rug! Now, that _there_ were a mess to put right."

Gabe hiccoughed and looked up at her with eyes both wondering and disbelieving. "He did?" he asked.

"Sure he did," said Bethel. "His gran'pappy scold him sumthin' fierce, too, fo' stealin' them peaches."

"Is you goin' scold me?" asked Gabe. His breathing was levelling now, and the tears had stopped. Mary blessed Bethel for her astute distractions.

"Nawsir," said Bethel with a shake of her head. "You didn' take nuthin' you ain' s'posed to. T'ain't you' fault you took sick."

"No, ma'am," Gabe mumbled, shaking his head. "I didn' mean it."

Bethel patted his tearstained cheek with motherly tenderness. "I know you didn', honey," she soothed.

Mary adjusted her hold so that she could lift Gabe out of the soiled blanket, and Bethel tugged it away. The child's bare feet scrabbled briefly on his mother's lap as he settled back against her. Bethel used the cloth to blot at the splotches on Mary's sleeve until the younger woman waved her off.

"Never mind that," she said distractedly. "It doesn't matter."

Bethel started to speak, and then stiffened, straightening and looking over Mary's head towards the dining room door. Mary's heart caught in her throat as she heard what had brought the older woman up short. "Here!" she cried, drawing herself up instinctively and repenting of it as Gabe stirred disconsolately in her lap. "In here!"

Booted feet hurried through the dining room, and a moment later Doctor Whitehead was at her side. Bethel withdrew swiftly and the kind-eyed gentleman bowed. "Good evening, Miss Mary," he said gently. "I'm sorry to meet under such circumstances."

"Thank you for coming!" Mary exclaimed. "We've been so frightened."

"Yes," said the doctor. "Yes, that's perfectly natural." He bent again, this time taking hold of the armrest so that he could look almost levelly at the child. "Well now, son, do you remember me?"

Gabe nodded. "You's de doctor," he said. His whole face furrowed into a miserable frown. "I's sick."

"That's just what I here," said Doctor Whitehead. "Would it be all right if I boosted you up onto the table and had a little look at you?"

Gabe glanced askance at Mary, and she forced her lips to smile as she nodded. "Guess so," he said, lifting his arms so that the man could take hold under them.

"That's a good little man," Whitehead said as he lifted. "Ooph! You've got heavy since the last time I picked you up, haven't you? You'll be running this place in no time."

He set the child on the edge of the table, bare legs dangling, and put out his hand. Turning in the chair now, Mary saw Cullen standing in the doorway with the physician's black bag in one tight fist. He rendered it up and retreated against the wall, eyes fixed on his son. His hair was wild and his shirt dark with cold perspiration, but his face was carefully neutral as Gabe twisted to look at him.

"Pappy!" he said happily, but quite without his usual vigor.

"I'm here, son," Cullen said. His voice, too, was hoarse and strained.

"Now then," said Doctor Whitehead as he opened his satchel and spread a roll of gleaming steel instruments on the table; "tell me about this cough."

"It's awful," said Cullen starkly. "He started, and he just couldn't stop. Couldn't even take a breath. When he tried it would just catch in his throat, sharp-like."

The graying brows furrowed. "How'd it sound?" he asked.

"Rattling. High-pitched." Cullen shook his head helplessly. His eyes were stormy with misery "_Painful._"

"Like this," said Mary, sitting up straight and exhaling. She drew in a breath very quickly and sparely, tugging it up against her palate and into her sinuses in a harsh, wheezing _whoop_. Cullen stiffened and Bethel's head snapped to the side to look at her. Gabe's eyes grew wide.

"That's it," Cullen gasped after a moment's shocked silence. He pointed feebly at Mary. "Just… _just_ like that."

Doctor Whitehead nodded, and looked over his shoulder at her. "Thank you, Miss Mary," he said. "That was an uncanny impression. Sounds like whooping cough to me, all right."

Bethel swallowed a noise of despair. The kettle was at a lively boil now, and she busied herself in taking it off the stove. From the dish dresser she brought the china teapot, and started measuring out the dark leaves with a silver spoon.

The doctor picked up a flat tool with a gently curved tip. He curled his left hand behind Gabe's head to support the base of his skull. "Tilt your head back, now," he said; "and open up wide."

Gabe obeyed, and the instrument came down carefully upon his tongue. Doctor Whitehead squinted and shook his head. "Cullen, could you bring the lamp and hold it here, just over my shoulder?" he asked.

Cullen moved around him and reached for the squat bowl of the kitchen lamp. His hands were shaking and he paused, staring sternly at them as though willing them to be still. It seemed he was successful, for the tremors stopped and he cupped his fingers around the glass bulb, using his other palm to brace the bottom. He positioned the light above and just to the left of the older man's shoulder, and the doctor nodded.

"Fine, that's fine," he said. "Now, Gabe, I need you to give me a nice, long 'ahh'. You think you can do that?"

Gabe obliged, the sound coming thickly. The doctor peered intently into his mouth as he did so, and when the boy fell silent and drew in a breath through his nose he removed the retractor and nodded. "No inflammation of the throat or tonsils," he said. He reached to undo the tiny buttons that fastened the throat of Gabe's nightshirt. "Son, I'm just going to have a little feel under here," he said, planting the first two fingers of each hand under the little boy's jaw. They worked expertly, palpating the sides of his throat. "Now, it may hurt a little if there's any swelling. Just you let me know if you feel it, that's a good little man. Cullen, you can go ahead and put that down; just keep it near. Have you got another handy? We could all do with a bit more light, I think."

Mary thought that what he was actually trying to do was to give Cullen something to occupy himself so that he might forget his anxiety for a moment or two. She was grateful. Doctor Whitehead knew her husband well, and was surely aware of the stiffness in his bearing and the grey tint to his complexion that meant he was almost sick with worry. Cullen brushed wordlessly past Mary and vanished into the dining room, reappearing a moment later with the best lamp in one hand and the second-best in the other. He lit them, turning the wicks as high as possible without running the risk of them smoking. With their glow the room was almost as bright as on a cloudy afternoon, and a good deal more cheerful-looking.

"Oh!" Gabe said sharply, and all three adults looked immediately to him. Doctor Whitehead, however, seemed unconcerned. He withdrew his hands and smiled.

"Good boy," he said. "I'm sorry that stung." He put his palm flat on the tabletop and frowned. "It's a little cold, isn't it? Bethel, do you have a towel or something for this child to sit on?"

"Yes," said Bethel; "yassir." She opened the door in the little side cupboard and brought one out. Cullen picked Gabe up, holding him close with one hand pressed high upon his back as if he might thus insure him against the dreaded cough. When Bethel had spread the cloth over the corner of the table, Cullen moved to set Gabe down again.

"Just a moment." Doctor Whitehead tugged up the back of Gabe's nightgown to the waist, so that he sat down bare-bottomed on the towel. Cullen drew back, but only a half-step, hovering protectively. From his bag the doctor brought his stethoscope. It was one of the patented flexible models, with the chest cup and the narrow earpiece conjoined by a spring covered in silk. He rolled Gabe's nightshirt high on his back, and Gabe squeezed his arms close to his body without being told, holding the cloth in place. Pushing it back a little further with the hand that held the cup, Doctor Whitehead brought the other piece to his ear and listened.

"Take in a big, deep breath, and hold it, son," he instructed.

Mary's heart was in her throat as Gabe obeyed, certain that the action would bring about another fit of coughing. But though Gabe's cheeks puffed out like a bullfrog he held his breath successfully until the physician instructed him to let it out. He did so all at once, in a big, hot puff that ruffled the hair behind Doctor Whitehead's ear.

He chuckled, shaking his head and adjusting the stethoscope. "Let's just try that again, shall we?" he said. "This time, try and let it out nice and slow so I can listen how your lungs sound. That all right with you?"

"Yassir," said Gabe happily. He knew he was doing well, and he was proud. Mary was, too. After the hellish struggles of the previous hour her son was remarkably calm and collected. Indeed, he was the most serene of all of them. Even Doctor Whitehead, for all his air of quiet capability, seemed uneasy.

"Right, now. Deep breath," he said. "And out, nice and slow."

Gabe pursed his lips and blew very slowly, his ribs deflating visibly as he did so. But he was not even halfway through expelling the air when his breath hitched, coming sharply in instead of out. Then his jaw fell and a harsh cough tore from his body, followed immediately by another and another. The doctor hastily withdrew the stethoscope, dropping it on the table and taking hold of Gabe's hip and shoulder to brace him. Another cough ripped free from the little boy's throat and he tried to take a breath, only to have it catch shrill and brutal in an excruciating _whoop_.

"Do something!" Cullen snapped as Gabe began to cough again. "Ain't you goin' do something?"

"Nothing I can do," said the doctor quietly, scarcely audible over the ratcheting coughs. Gabe wheezed again, clutching at a fistful of his coat sleeve. His face was a lurid red and his eyes were brimming with tears. "Nothing anyone can do but ride it out. There, son, that's a brave little man. You'll be all right in a minute. You'll be all right."

Mary got to her feet and hastened to Gabe's other side, scarcely caring that she had to nudge Cullen aside to do it. Her husband was still staring in consternation at the doctor. Bethel had abandoned the tea things and was now standing as near as propriety permitted, her body fraught with anxious energy as if she awaited only some command to spring into action. But there was nothing any of them could do. This was a battle the child had to fight for himself, this awful struggle for life's most basic nourishment. Mary traced a circle on his back, wishing that she had the power to draw the cough out through her fingertips. She wanted to cry, to scream, to beg the Lord to smite her with the sickness and spare her son, but none of that would help him. Instead she murmured senseless, quiet words of comfort as his small body shuddered and heaved and the color left his face.

"Good God," Cullen whispered, burying his head in one hand as Gabe's lips began to purple and the whoops took on a fresh note of panic. For a moment he stood, an image of despair, and then he flung his arm down to his side and straightened his spine, squaring his shoulders. "What the hell do you mean there ain't nothing you can do?" he bellowed. "You're the doctor, ain't you? Help him, dammit!"

Gabe's ribs jerked anxiously and his wide eyes rolled towards his pappy, terrified not so much by the outburst itself as by the realization that his father was just as frightened as he. Mary's head whipped to her right shoulder and she fixed stern eyes on her husband. "Cullen, hush! You're frightening him!" she hissed.

It was the nearest thing to scolding him she had ever done in the presence of a visitor, but at the moment she did not care if she looked like a shrew. Gabe had cause enough to panic, unable to breathe, without Cullen's anxiety for him coming out in angry words. Cullen seemed to realize this, for he blinked like one suddenly awakened and nodded unsteadily. He reached an arm between Mary and the doctor, and planted it on Gabe's knee, gripping reassuringly.

"Look at me, son," he said. "Just look at me. You'll be all right in a minute. We're here. We're all here. Ain't nothing to be scared of."

As abruptly as it began the fit was over. Gabe drew in three deep, desperate gasps and let out a little whimper, then leaned towards Mary's body. She hugged him close, kissing the crown of his head, and Doctor Whitehead withdrew his hands. Cullen moved in nearer, his hip pressing close to Mary's as he ruffled Gabe's hair.

"There," he said, trying to sound cheerful despite the quaver in his voice. "It's over now. It's over."

Gabe's head bobbed, but his eyes were screwed tightly closed and he said nothing. His hand closed on Cullen's sleeve, twisting the coarse, damp cloth. Now that the moment of panic was past Mary could feel the chill of her husband's wet clothes through the thin silk of her dressing gown. He was quaking, deeply and almost imperceptibly.

Doctor Whitehead curled the stethoscope and tucked it into his bag. He looked pensively at the child and sighed. "Perhaps we might step into the other room?" he suggested. "Bethel? Would you please…"

Mary looked up, startled by the intimation that she should abandon her child, but Cullen had a grip on her elbow and drew her gently but firmly away. At once Bethel took her place, so swiftly that Gabe scarcely had time to straighten himself to sit unassisted before there was another loving arm to lean against and another familiar breast to rest his head upon.

"Here, honey, le's go sit by the stove where it warm," Bethel murmured, gathering him tenderly into her arms and smoothing the nightshirt back down over his legs. She rocked her body as she walked, cooing softly to the child. Mary, looking back over her shoulder even as she was led into the dining room, saw the mournful love in the old woman's eyes and felt the strength leave her legs. Bethel was looking at Gabe as if she were locking the memory of embracing him deep within her heart. She was looking at him as if this might be her last chance to hold him.

Doctor Whitehead had picked up the good lamp, and he set it down on the dining room table as Cullen closed the door. Mary let him guide her to the nearest chair and her trembling knees gave way. A strong, calloused hand settled on each shoulder, and she tried to forget that they were quaking. "Doctor?" she whispered. "Doctor, how bad is it?"

"I've seen worse," said Doctor Whitehead, gripping the edge of the table and regarding her gravely. "Only mild swelling of the glands, no sign of scarlet fever or other disease. He's a strong boy, well-nourished and obviously well-loved. He's got a good warm house to live in, and plenty of folks to care for him. He's nearly four years old now, isn't he?"

Cullen's grip tightened a little as he nodded. "Four this winter," he mumbled.

"Well, see now, even a year younger and I'd give him less of a chance," the doctor said, his voice rising a little in pitch as he tried to sound optimistic. "Whooping cough is hardest on new babies and the very young. Most children over eight survive it with no lasting ill-effects."

Mary felt sick. Gabe was only four.

"What about boys his age?" Cullen asked hoarsely. He never shied from the truth, however bitter it might be.

"It can be fatal," Doctor Whitehead told him, frank but still very gentle. "If he takes an especially bad spell, or if he comes down with pneumonia or some other complication, there ain't much I can do. But like I said, he's strong. He's been healthy as a little French pony all his life up 'til now, not counting them chicken pox. You remember how frightened you were by the chicken pox, Miss Mary?"

A thin, nervous laugh bubbled over her lips, and she nodded. Despite Bethel's calm assurance that every baby had his turn with them, the itchy red blotches had terrified her. Gabe had only been eighteen months old, and for a week he had been positively miserable. But for all his distress and for all her fears he had recovered completely, with only one little scar on the inside of his left ankle to show for the ordeal.

"Well, if you get to fretting you just remember that," said the doctor. "By the grace of God, there's a real hope that a year from now you'll look back on this just the same way."

"Whooping cough ain't chicken pox, Doc," Cullen said. Now his tone was hard. "You said yourself he might… might…"

His voice broke and he bowed low over Mary's head. Her hands flew up to grip his wrists. She wanted to turn and embrace him, but she lacked the strength to stand. Doctor Whitehead took two steps, closing the distance between them. He laid a firm, consoling hand on Cullen's back, and curled the other over Mary's frantic fingers.

"Now, it ain't no good dwelling on that," he said, very softly. "It ain't no good, son, you hear me? That boy in there needs his pappy to be brave and cheerful: he's gonna be frightened, and he's gonna be sick and he's gonna be miserable. He needs to be able to look to you and see there ain't nothing worth getting scared over. Best chance he's got of coming through this is if he believes he's gonna get well, and how's he supposed to believe that if he thinks you don't?"

Cullen cleared his throat and straightened his backbone. He nodded. "Sure," he said huskily, slipping his right arm out of Mary's grasp so that he could take her hand. "Sure, I can see that."

"Isn't there anything you can do, Doctor?" Mary asked quietly. She did not really dare to hope, but neither could she help it.

"You can dose him with soothing syrup if it eases him any," said Whitehead. "I got to admit in my experience it don't seem to do much. Give him warm baths to settle his chest; I got a camphor liniment I'll leave with you, too. Don't use no more than you can put on your first two fingertips, or else sometimes it can raise a rash. Best to keep him in the kitchen during the day: the stove gives good heat without smoking. If you do need to put him up where there's a fireplace, have your man clean it first. Is there a flue in his bedroom?"

Mary shook her head. "A cast-iron heater," she said. She had always before thought her husband's grandfather a fool for neglecting to put a fireplace in the middle room. Now she was glad.

"Good," said the doctor. "Keep it lit at night, and the vents open just enough to draw a strong draft. Plenty of blankets on the bed, good warm clothes during the day. Don't let him go barefoot. Tonight's the first time this has happened, yes?"

"Yes," said Cullen. "Well, no, not exactly. He woke up Sunday night coughing; gasping in between. But it weren't… it weren't nothing like tonight."

"It's only just begun, then," Doctor Whitehead said quietly. "I won't prescribe a purgative just yet. We'll wait and see how he manages without. I don't like purging small children. It's different when they ain't out of diapers, but at Gabe's age it's hard on the spirit. We got to try and keep his spirits high. I've seen hundreds of children with whooping cough over the years, and the ones who come through are most often the ones who kept cheerful. I'll come back on Thursday and check on him."

"But Doc—" Cullen began.

The older man shot him a sharp look. "I'll come back on Thursday and check on him," he said firmly. He offered his arm to Mary and helped her to stand. "Now, you just go in there and sit with him a while, and let me have a little word with your husband. Was that tea Bethel was brewing? I'd sure admire to have a cup."

"Yes," said Mary as he guided her to the door. The reflexes of a hostess overtook her and raised a small smile. "Shall I have her bring some in?"

"No, no," said the doctor. "I'll be in in just a minute or two and take it by the stove. Give me a chance to have a little word with Gabe before I go. We all got to do our best to keep him hopeful."

"Thank you, Doctor," Mary murmured. "I don't know how I can ever thank you."

"Just like that will do nicely, Miss Mary," he said kindly. "You make the loveliest 'thank yous' I ever heard in my life."

Then he ushered her back into the kitchen. He closed the door firmly behind her, shutting her out of whatever conversation he wished to have with Cullen, but Mary did not care. She had eyes only for her son, curled in Bethel's lap and tugging absently at one of the buttons on her basque. He looked up at her with glassy, tired eyes. "Mama?" he sighed, rubbing his cheek against Bethel's collarbone. "I's sick."


End file.
